


Code Ren

by blarfkey



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Grease Monkey Rey, Let Rey Cuss!, Lonely Ben Solo, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey x Caffeine, Secret Identity, hella au, tall dark mysterious strangers, tfa au, that whole "I know you but you don't know that I know you" thing, the beautiful friendship of Rey and Finn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23948470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/pseuds/blarfkey
Summary: It starts out as coincidence. Rey, newly hired maintenance worker for the First Order, just happens to be nearby when Kylo Ren destroys another room in a fit of rage -- a “Code Ren”. She does such a good job, however, that she becomes their go-to maid every time Kylo Ren has a temper tantrum. Sure, it may be good job security, but it also sucks getting dragged out of dinner or sleep just to clean up after a grown man with the emotional control of a toddler. It gets real old real fast.Only two things make this whole affair even remotely bearable: her new friend, Stormtrooper FN 2187 and visits from a mysterious, dark-haired stranger who has an uncanny knack for finding her after a “Code Ren” and brings her gifts
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 286
Kudos: 455





	1. Part One Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I know absolutely fuck all about parts and mechanics and tools so please forgive anything that doesn't make a lick of sense and just don't think about it too hard.

The first time she sees the destruction of Kylo Ren, she almost gets fired. The First Order is so goddamn picky about uniform, it's ridiculous. They did not appreciate at all seeing her wander back to the mess hall with the top half of her jumpsuit unzipped and tied around her waist, leaving her in her undershirt.

In fact, she's in the middle of a severe upbraiding by some superior officer or other -- she can't keep the command chain straight here -- and he's not listening at all to her complaints that it's hot as hell in those wall panels and she's from a desert planet for R’iia’s sake.

Apparently, the First Order hates backtalk even more than dress violations, and she's pretty sure she's gonna get fired via airlock when a stormtrooper comes careening down the hall in a burst of out of breath static.

"There's been another incident," he says, his breath whooshing from his helmet in a rush of static.

"Code Ren?" her officer asks.

"Yes sir."

"Goddam--" the officer cuts off a decidedly non-regulation swear and glares over at her.

"Whatever he's destroyed, fix it. If you do, I'll forget this little incident, granted it doesn't happen again," he practically snarls before walking off.

Rey looks over at the stormtrooper.

"I'm sorry, I'm rather new here. What's a Code Ren?"

The stormtrooper stares at her a moment, like he's evaluating her. "It might be better to show you."

The room is in shambles. Huge swathes of paneling are slashed through, the edges still smoking and burning. Exposed wiring sends sparks scattering across the floor, some narrowly missing her own boots.

"What the hell happened?" she wonders, looking around. This will take days. She's got to order new paneling, strip wires, run diagnostics.

"Lord Ren," says the storm trooper grimly. "He's the leader of the Knights of Ren and the Supreme Leader's apprentice. I'm surprised you haven't seen him skulking around the ship yet."

"Maybe I have and just didn't know it," she says offhandedly, walking around the room and inspecting the damage.

The stormtrooper snorts. "Oh, you'd know it. That guy is terrifying. I passed him in the hallway once, and I had nightmares for a week."

"Hmm," she says. "So what did he do? Just come in here and smash everything to bits?"

"Pretty much. He gets these fits of rage and then he just . . . goes to town."

Rey snorts. "Sounds like a baby to me. Alright, I'm going to need a lot of tools for this. Can you quarantine this area off? I don't want anyone getting hurt from these wires."

"Of course. What about you? Are you going to be alright?"

She thinks back to all those crashed star destroyers she scavenged as a kid, full of broken wiring and jagged edges and rusty plates just waiting for the wrong footstep to plunge her down a thousand meter hole.

"This is nothing compared to what I've done before," she says. "Thanks for your help. What was your name?"

Too late she remembers that troopers don't have names, and she winces, worried she may have offended him.

"FN-2187," he says. "What's yours?"

Now she feels even worse because she has a name to give him.

"It's Rey."

FN-2187 salutes her. "I hope I see you again, Rey."

"Me too." She gives him a soft smile, and he turns to leave.

She spins back around and starts a mental tally of all the parts she's going to need.

The second time she sees the results of Kylo Ren's temper tantrum, she just happens to be walking down the hallway when a tall, masked figure stalks out of a smoking room. Only her quick reflexes prevent him from barreling into her.

He doesn't spare her the slightest glance as he leaves, giving Rey ample opportunity to ogle him. The man is _ginormous_. And not just in that he's tall -- there's a presence about him that looms and fills whatever space he's in. He's the same kind of darkness that waited hungrily for one wrong step in those abandoned ships.

No wonder FN-2187 got freaked out.

Once he's turned the corner, Rey peers into the smoking room and winces.

"Oh good, you're here."

She jumps and turns around. A senior officer stands in the hallway behind her.

"I was going to call maintenance, but you're just as good. Take care of this . . ." he waves his hand vaguely at the mess inside the room. " . . . indiscretion. Preferably before the night is over."

Rey fights back a groan. She was on her way to dinner.

"Yes, sir," she sighs, just barely keeping the sullen edge from her tone.

The higher ups don’t like that kind of thing either, as it turns out.

She steps inside the smoking room and starts taking inventory.

"Have you seen him yet?"

Rey looks up from her table at the mess hall. A dark-skinned man takes a seat across from her. He has a stranger's face, but his voice is almost familiar.

"Seen who?" she asks, trying to place him.

He leans forward conspiratorially. "Kylo Ren!"

Rey's eyes widen. It's FN-2187.

"Oh, it's you! Hello," she says, grinning. "Yes, I did get to see him. Just for a moment."

"Freaky, right?"

"Definitely. He's very . . . tall. I had to fix another one of his tantrums, though. R’iia, it took forever."

"You're really good at that stuff, though," says FN-2187. "You'll probably get promoted soon."

Rey snorts. "I don't have the pedigree, I think, for that. Or the connections."

"What's your family name?" he asks, and he sounds wistful.

"I don't have one. My parents . . . left me when I was small."

Even though she gave up hope a long time ago, it still hurts to admit it. But there is a light in FN-2187's eyes. It's not happiness at her misfortune, exactly, but recognition. She realizes he probably doesn't know his family either.

"That's okay," he says. "You probably wouldn't want it anyway. Have you noticed that all the guys at the top are kind of assholes?"

Rey laughs so hard she snorts and has to cover her mouth.

The third time she sees Kylo Ren's wreckage, it's by request. In the middle of the _night cycle._ Rey is dragged, bleary eyed and exhausted to a smoking communications room.

"Your work so far has been impeccable," says her boss, "as has been your discretion. We will pay overtime for this, and if you keep it up, maybe a promotion will be in order."

Rey bites the tip of her tongue to prevent her from lashing out. She just pulled a twelve hour shift, and only FN-2187's jokes kept her awake enough to finish dinner. The last thing she wants is a kriffing promotion, thank you very much. Just let her sleep for fuck's sake.

The console has taken the worst damage. Rey surveys it with heavy lidded eyes. _God_ what she wouldn't do for some caf right now. Pulling out her datapad, Rey starts tapping in the tools she's going to need for this job.

The longer she sits, exhausted, with the cold floor seeping through the material of her jumpsuit, stripping wires and narrowly dodging stray sparks, the harder it is to keep her anger in check.

And when a stray spark hits her cheek, sending her jolting backwards so fast she loses her footing and nearly cracks her head on the floor, the rage boils over.

She throws her wire stripper onto the floor beside her and lets out a scream of rage.

"This is _bullshit_ ," she yells, not caring if anyone can hear her, though the corridor was empty when she got here.

"You tell 'em, Rey!"

Rey screams and jerks around to the door. A stormtrooper sticks his head through the door. Even though she can't see his face, she can tell from his head tilt that it's her friend.

"Where did you come from?" she demands, breathless.

"I've been mopping the hallway, and I heard you working. So I wanted to say 'hi,'" he says, and her anger cools a little at the thought of him wanting to visit her.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi. So what's bullshit again?"

She blows the hair that’s escaped from her buns out of her eyes. " _This_. This whole kriffing thing! Apparently I'm number one when it comes to fixing Kylo Ren's messes."

"Yeah, isn't this your third time?"

"Yes! And, you know, I get that it's my job to fix things around here, but nowhere in my contract does it say that I have to do it without a full kriffing night's sleep!" Now that she’s started, the words tumble out of her mouth like she tripped and fell downhill. "Or dinner. Or _– R’iia forbid –_ a decent cup of caf!"

"You know," says FN-2187 slowly, "I can probably help you with that last one. I just got done mopping the officer's lounge. They have a caf machine."

Rey stares up at him like he's offering her an escape pod and twenty thousand credits. "You'd do that for me?" she breathes. "But you could get in trouble."

FN-2187 waves a hand at her. "Please. They're all in their fancy quarters five decks up. They're never gonna know. Just make sure you toss the cup in the mess hall when you're done here."

"You're the most amazing human I have ever met," she tells him earnestly.

He just laughs and walks off.

"I'll be back in a little bit," he calls from the hall.

With the prospect of hot caf in her near future, the beast in her chest has calmed down somewhat, enough to get back to work, though she's still pissed about the whole situation. Her mind turns to the person responsible, that hulking idiot with the emotional restraint of a toddler. How many times is he going to keep doing this shit?

Her ears pick up on soft footfalls and she grins. "You know what else is bullshit?" she calls to FN-2187. "Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren and his stupid baby tantrums, I'm so sick of it. Do you have any idea what I would do if I get my hands on him?"

"No. I don't."

Rey screams a second time that night and whirls around. Because that voice does not belong to FN-2187. Another man stands in the doorway, tall and dark like a stain. The air in Rey's lungs seizes up. Sweet Maker, how loud was she yelling? Complaining about one of the top leaders of the ship in such a way -- forget being fired, they'll probably immediately terminate her _life_.

But he doesn't look like an officer. Actually, he doesn't look like anything, dressed only in a simple black tunic and pants that suspiciously resemble pajamas. His thick hair brushes just above his shoulders at a length that is very much _not_ regulation, almost as black and shiny as the floor she's sitting on.

"So, what would you do?" he asks. His voice is softer than his size suggests, rich and deep. And as hard as she is trying not to freak out right now, she almost wants him to speak more just so she can hear it. "Something violent, judging from your tone."

She doesn't confirm it. But neither does she deny it. He cocks his head to the side.

"And what warrants such a reaction?"

She holds his gaze for a long moment, looking for signs that she might be in seriously deep shit and finding nothing but the steady intensity of his eyes.

But you know what? It's getting harder and harder to care. And right now, caf-deprived and sleep-deprived and _sanity-_ deprived, Rey doesn't give one shit who this man is or what she's about to mouth vomit in his presence.

"Look at this!” She gestures to the room around her. "Do you know that this is the _third_ time in two weeks that I've had to patch up whatever room he's demolished in a fit of rage? And I just finished a twelve hour shift. I was _sleeping_ when they dragged me out here!”

Once she starts, it’s hard to stop.

“Look at this console! It'll take me at least six hours, if not more, to get this console working again. And then, when I'm done, I get to head back for another shift at work. It's practically slave labor," she snarls, more to herself than the man in the door. "And I thought I got out of all that when I left home!"

"It sounds like you're under a lot of stress," he says, his voice perfectly neutral. "Perhaps he is as well."

"I am under a tremendous amount of stress," she snaps back, jabbing her wrench at him for emphasis. "I've been dragged away from sleep, from _dinner_ , from all of my _other_ responsibilities, because everyone just expects me to drop everything and fix it right this second. But you don't see me heading into the nearest room and busting everything up with this wrench because life is pissing me off and I can't even have a decent cup of caf to get me through another sleepless night. So forgive me, but Kylo Ren and his _stress_ can kiss my ass right now."

The man's eyebrows rise a tiny fraction, just enough to be noticeable. Rey wonders if maybe that's the last straw.

"It's good to let your anger out," he says finally. "Swallowing it down does nothing but destroy you from the inside out."

"You're . . . not going to report me?" she asks slowly.

The corner of his mouth quirks up just the barest amount, a shadow of the possibility of a smile.

"No. Not tonight. Though I would be quieter about your rage -- in the future."

"Thank you," she says, relief easing the tension she didn't know she carried in her shoulders. "Who . . . who are you?"

"Nobody," he says, smooth and quick. "And I'm just here for this."

He steps into the room, and the closer he gets, the more she has to crane her neck up to see him. He walks past her to pick up something that had skittered under the edge of a cabinet.

A datapad.

"It must have dropped during his ‘indiscretion’ or he would have destroyed it," she says. "You got lucky."

The look he gives her is unreadable. "I suppose I did. Good luck with your work."

"Thanks.”

She wastes valuable seconds watching him leave before turning her back to the task at hand.

A few minutes later, FN-2187 appears with a steaming cup of caf, and she could kiss him.

She finishes about an hour before her next shift is due. It takes every effort to drag herself back down to the mess hall to scarf something down before her next shift. When her boss approaches her table, Rey can't stop the groan of despair from escaping.

"Your shift has been given to another," her boss says. "When you're done eating, get some sleep. You look like hell."

She gapes up at him, spoon hovering by her mouth.

"You're giving me the day off?" she asks dumbly.

"Not me. This came from higher up. Don't question it. Just enjoy it."

Rey nods and keeps her mouth shut. Maybe someone was impressed with her work and this is to show their appreciation -- which is wildly out of character from what she understands the higher ups are like.

She has a sneaking suspicion where it might have come from.

This time, she manages to catch Kylo Ren as he storms _into_ a room. A primal scream of rage lifts the hairs on her neck before she hears a strange buzzing sound followed shortly by the sounds of destruction.

She sighs and leans back against the wall to the right of the doorway. Might as well save her time and wait it out here, rather than get all the way to the hangar only to get dragged right back in there.

An energy leaks from the room that she's never felt before. It sizzles like lightning in a sandstorm, and Rey can't fight the urge to peek ever so carefully around the corner of the door --

A blade of bright crimson light swings down, cutting into the metal walls as if the durasteel was nothing more than cheap gauze. It's as mesmerizing as it is terrifying to watch that red arc flash over and over again. That strange energy crackles all around him, dark and wild and as uncontrollable as the Breath of R’iia.

He pauses, breath coming in great bursts of static. His head cocks to the side ever so slightly – like he could feel her presence. Rey jerks back into the hallway, heart thudding in her ears.

Moments later he stalks back out of the room, the blade extinguished, leaving behind a black hilt that looks like it's been scavenged from scraps.

She can't tear her eyes away, and for one second the gaze of that unnerving black mask settles on her.

It's a second that lasts a year. Rey hears nothing but the dull roar of her blood in her ears. She stands rooted to the spot. If he were to pull that laser sword on her, she'd just stand there and take it.

Then he turns his gaze away, and time resumes its natural pace and Rey can breathe again.

When one of the officers shows up, she's already taking notes on her datapad for repairs.

Roughly an hour later, footsteps sound behind her while she's got her head in the wall panel. For a brief, wild moment Rey thinks it's Kylo Ren -- though that makes no sense whatsoever.

Instead, when she resurfaces, it's the man from before. He's dressed in all black again, though these clothes look like an actual uniform and not pajamas. Clutched in his hand is a white disposable cup.

"Oh, it's you," she says, brightening. Her eyes linger on the cup in his hand. She can smell the caf from here.

"How did I know I would find you here?" he asks.

"Where there's Kylo Ren, there's smoke," she says dryly. "And where there's smoke, there's me."

His mouth twitches just a tiny bit, and there's that barest hint of maybe a smile _maybe._ It’s impossible, but Rey can’t shake the feeling that she’s known him from somewhere -- a dream or something. He just seems familiar to her.

"You're remarkably calm today,” he says.

"Well, I just had my life flash before my eyes, so . . ." Strange how cavalier she can sound about it with him when it took ten minutes for her hands to stop shaking.

"How so?"

"I actually saw Kylo Ren destroy the room this time. I sat in that hallway and waited him out because I knew by the time I made it down the lift to the hangar, I'd have to turn right back around."

The man leans against the computer bank, setting the cup on top. "You've never seen him before?"

"I did once." She leans forward over her crossed legs conspiratorially. "But this time he looked _right_ at me."

He crosses his arms and leans down, like he’s sharing a secret. From her perspective on the floor he looks like a giant. "Did you tell him he was bullshit?"

The expression on his face remains placid as the dunes on a windless day, but he's joking with her. She can just tell. 

" _Obviously_ not." She gestures at her torso. "I'm still in one piece. But for a second I was terrified that he might not want any witnesses."

"And rid himself of the one person capable of cleaning up after him?"

Rey snorts. "What's Kylo Ren without his maid?"

"Indeed."

He says nothing after that, and a strange quiet settles around them. It feels way too companionable for two people who barely know each other. Rey returns to her work, unscrewing the scorched wall panel, feeling the weight of his gaze on her.

"Did you forget something again?" she asks lightly.

"No."

"So, you're just bored? Don't know how much entertainment you're getting out of watching me taking out magnascrews."

"Are you bored?"

Rey leans in close, squinting and wishing she had brought her oculars. In order for the wall panels to fit together seamlessly, the screws are minuscule to the point of near invisibility. Honestly, she relies more on instinct than she does on her own eyes.

"I can't complain," she says softly. "It's not as exciting as what I’m used to. But I also eat on a regular basis so . . . it's an even trade, I suppose. I'm just hoping that maybe I can earn my way up to working on the star craft."

She's starting to babble, the desire to fill the silence welling up in her. When did silence start bothering her? She dares a glance up at him, but the man doesn't seem irritated by it. Not that his expression would give it away even if he were.

"What do you know about ships?"

Flashes of her old life -- the speeder she built herself from scrap -- half corrupted blueprints of star destroyers -- sneaking around Unkar Plutt's junkyards by the light of the moons --

She smiles, a surprise stab of homesickness trembling at the edges.

"I know all about ships."

Sometimes she looks back on her decision and doesn't feel triumphant at how far she's come from that clawing hunger that haunted her every day -- sometimes she thinks: _look how low I've sunk_.

"I have to go," he says after a moment. He almost sounds regretful.

Rey musters up a smile and small wave for him. "I'll see you around," she says. "I have a feeling."

He just nods to her and makes his way to the door. Something white catches the corner of her eye.

"You forgot your caf!" she calls out to him.

He pauses just a moment in the doorway. "It's yours."

Her squeal of delight follows him into the hallway.


	2. Part 1 Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Star Wars Day!

Two nights later, Kylo Ren takes off on some secret bullshit mission for the Supreme Leader, and the rest of the ship breathes easier. Of course, there's always General Hux to ruin people's day, but since he doesn't tear up random rooms of the ship, Rey doesn't have to deal with him and she doesn't care.

For nearly a week Rey works her shifts at normal times, and not once does she get dragged from her dreams or her dinner or her increasingly fun conversations with FN-2187 to go deal with the fallout from someone else's bullshit.

It's bliss.

The only thing missing are her strange visits from the other man. And Rey can admit, privately, to herself, that it's something worthy of missing. She hasn't seen an inch of his glorious hair in several days, and she wonders if maybe she said something that scared him off. Maybe she got too personal. Maybe his curiosity was sated and he dismissed her as nothing but the nobody she really is.

She tries not to dwell on the hot acidic disappointment she feels at the thought.

Sure enough, the night Kylo Ren returns, Rey is summoned almost immediately to the hangar. At  _ 2 in the night cycle.  _ Thankfully, Kylo himself is long gone by the time she makes it to this ship. It’s leaking smoke from the cockpit -- big surprise -- and the sides are scored with cannon fire. Judging from this kind of damage, he's probably holed up in the medbay.

Despite the ridiculous hour, Rey can't be too angry because very shortly she'll be running her hands all over the insides of an  _ Upsilon _ -class command shuttle. Her mouth practically waters at the thought.

Even after all these weeks, she can't get over how pristine the First Order's equipment is. This ship's been blasted all to hell and back, but it's still light years ahead of the dusted, worn out, 30-years-outdated ships she's dug around in all her life. The leather of the pilot's seat is supple and uncracked, and still warm. She runs her hands over it before opening the computer for a diagnostic.

As the data starts displaying on the screen, Rey winces. Shields took a major hit, as well as some of the fuel lines. It's a miracle that he made it here in one piece, honestly. This project should have a team of at least three people on it, minimum.

But it's just her. And two droids.

Her boss never mentioned a deadline, so Rey sets herself a rather leisurely pace as she pops open one of the floor panels and hops down inside, writing down a list of parts she'll need fetched. Tonight she won't be able to do much more than replace wiring, clean off the soot, and clear away debris.

The hangar is almost deserted at this time in the night cycle. The only sounds are the distant footsteps of the skeleton crew on watch. Rey hums to herself as she checks the state of the floor pressurizers. It's been so long since she's gotten her hands on a ship that her attention narrows in on the task at hand to the point where the background noise of the hangar fades away.

So when she looks back up, searching for her radiviewer, and sees the tall black stain of  _ him  _ looming over her, she screams enough to crack her own ear drums, the hydrospanner clattering to the floor.

"Motherkriffing R’iia," she gasps, a hand to her chest. "You gave me a heart attack. How long have you been standing there?!"

"Not long." There's that slight twitch of his mouth, like he wants to smile but won't allow it. "Did you not hear me?"

She shakes her head. "When I get really focused on something, the rest of the world kind of . . . falls away."

The white sheen of the disposable cup shines like a beacon against his dark gloves.

"Please tell me that's for me," she says nodding at it.

"It is."

She gasps in delight and clamors out of the floor panel. The cup warms her grateful hands, and she takes a moment to smell it.

"You're rapidly becoming my favorite person on this godforsaken ship," she tells him.

His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. Rey takes a long drink of her caf, relishing the way it scalds down her throat.

"How did you know I'd be here?"

"Kylo Ren's ship comes in smoking," he says. "I figured you wouldn't be far behind."

"You think it's on purpose by now?" she asks.

He shrugs. "It's possible you may have a reputation."

She snorts. "I doubt it. The only way people get anywhere on this ship is through connections, and I'm a nobody from nowhere."

"Where is nowhere?"

"Jakku."

She catches a flash of a wince on his face before he hides it. "That's . . . definitely nowhere."

"Yep. Stayed there way too long," she mutters, almost to herself. She takes another long sip. "I should get back at it."

"I've disturbed you long enough," he says, and it's something in the way he says it, almost too quickly, and there's a look in his eyes that leaks through the neutrality of his expression.

She blames that for what comes out of her mouth.

"You can disturb me as much as you want."

He should probably wear a helmet on the job, Rey muses. His eyes are too soft; they give too much away. Right now they flash with a spark of hope, so brief, and yet bright enough for Rey to glimpse the dark gaping hole of loneliness behind it.

It's an all too familiar hole.

"Especially if you keep bringing me gifts," she adds, to lighten things up.

She sets the cup on the floor and hops back into her floor panel. To her surprise and delight, he leans against the wall and crosses his arms.

"Is that why you're here? To get away?" he asks.

"I'm here because I would have starved to death if I wasn't," she says, keeping her voice light and casual even though the memories still sting.

"The Republic is good at letting their people waste away," he says bitterly.

Rey jabs her wire splitters at him. "Let's not pretend that the First Order gives one iota of a shit about people like me and places like Jakku. We're forgotten by everyone."

He shrugs, an acknowledgment. "How did you last as long as you did?”

"You know all those wrecked star destroyers from that big battle?" Her eyes glance up to him just in time to see him nod. "I’ve scavenged them since I was a little girl, and sold the parts for food. It's why I know how to fix so many things -- I know all the parts and how they fit together."

"Your parents made you scavenge those as a child? You could have been killed." A hint of outrage colors his normally guarded tone, and it warms her.

"My parents left me. A long time ago." She can feel the sudden intensity of his gaze, which she studiously avoids. "It's alright. I barely even remember them. They left me with this junker named Unkar Plutt, which is how I learned to scavenge."

"So what brought you here?"

To her surprise, she finds the whole story spilling out of her, fueled by his questions. She tells him about Unkar Plutt, about her AT-AT home, about the food portions that grew smaller and smaller the more work she did until she woke up one day, stomach cramping from hunger, and knew Unkar was waiting for her to waste away into something to be scavenged herself.

Why he seems so interested, she has no idea. There's nothing special about her, about her lonely life so filled with the silence of dead, empty places. It's not even heroic or particularly interesting. Yet he hangs on her every word, feeding her questions, until the stirrings of the morning shift interrupt him.

Rey fights off a yawn, despite the caf, which she finished a long time ago. By now the man is sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, one elbow resting on a bent knee.

"I should get back to my room," she says through another yawn. "I've got another shift coming up in an hour or so."

"I have neglected my own duties," he says, but not with any real regret.

"Yeah, you sound pretty torn up about that."

He snorts, the ghost of that almost-smile on his mouth. That's three in one night.

Someday Rey is going to see that smile in all of its glorious entirety.

He reaches down, offering her a hand, and pulls her up with a graceful ease that she's envious of. His gloved hand is warm, his grip sure. It's the most Rey has touched another person in a long, long time.

It's hard to make herself let go.

He escorts her off the ship.

"Good night," she says as they head into their opposite directions.

"You mean good morning," he says somewhat dryly.

Rey fights off a groan. "Don't remind me. I've got another twelve-hour coming up. Pray for me."

He says nothing in reply, but she feels his eyes watching her as she heads off towards one of the lifts.

When she gets to the mess hall for breakfast, her commanding officer approaches and once against informs her that her twelve-hour shift has been canceled in favor of the unexpected night-shift she just completed.

Her boss gives her a calculating stare. "Are you fraternizing with a superior officer?"

Rey shrugs. "Not that I'm aware of," she says, and it's not a lie.

"Hmm."

She scarfs down breakfast and then gratefully collapses in her bunk.

Her datapad wakes her up with new orders. It's just after lunch, and Rey feels almost hungover with exhaustion. Her body does not like this yo-yoing sleep schedule. So it's probably for the best that Rey is put on the night-shift to repair Kylo's ship.

She complies with only minimal grumbling. Honestly, she's not that upset at having that ship all to herself -- well, herself and two droids. It will be a beautiful ship once she cleans it up. And the star destroyer has imported or gathered all the supplies she needs to fix it herself.

And maybe, secretly, she thinks  _ he  _ might show up again.

With caf.

The first shift stays quiet and empty, and Rey swallows something that feels suspiciously like disappointment.

The second night he appears like a shadow. This time she doesn't jump, but only barely. She has to bite back a gasp at the sight of him. His whole posture sags, dragging him down with the same stubbornness as gravity. His skin is blotchy and pallid, like bruised fruit.

"What happened to you?" she asks. "You look like hell."

"Hell happened to me," comes his terse reply.

She extends the cup over to him. "You sure you don't want this? You look like you need it more than me."

He shakes his head. "Honestly, I can't stand the stuff. It's only ever for you."

She bites her cheek to keep from smiling. Something red drips from his nose, and without thinking Rey reaches out and swipes it on the sleeve of her uniform.

He jerks back, eyes wide and hands reaching for something on his waist that isn't there,

"Sorry," she says, flushing. "I didn't mean to startle you. But you're bleeding. You should go to medbay."

He wipes at his nose and stares at the blood smeared almost invisibly on his black gloves.

"They can't fix it. I'll be fine."

"Then sit down at least. Do you want some water?" She doesn't wait for a reply, digging out one of her ration bottles for him.

He slowly lowers himself to the floor and takes the bottle with only a small, baleful glare. He is probably not someone used to being vulnerable. Rey understands the discomfort at that.

"You should be in bed. I'm really not worth this trouble, especially for a cup of caf." She hands him one of her clean rags, and he holds it up to his nose.

His eyes are closed, his lashes like soot against his pale skin. Exhaustion sits like a bruise underneath them.

"You're distracting."

"Oh." She hesitates. "Is that good?"

"Yes."

She steals another glance at him, leaning against the wall like a broken droid, and she feels a twinge of empathy twist in her chest.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

Rey snaps her gaze away from him, flushing at the idea of being caught, but his eyes remain closed. He's talking about the ship. Of course.

"Parts replacements mostly," she says. “I did all the cleaning last night. This thing was covered in soot and blaster fire. Gotta wonder what happened to it.”

“The Resistance.” His reply is short and dripping with venom.

“Ah.” She swallows back her smirk – which would probably only agitate him further – and pops open a panel.

His stare prickles the back of her neck, but it doesn’t necessarily bother her. It just feels strange to attract that level of attention when she’s spent most of her life alone and looked over. Even here, where almost every minute of her daily life is scheduled and scrutinized, she’s treated with the same amount of attention as a droid. Which is to say – invisible.

Except by FN-2187.

And  _ him _ .

She finds herself rambling, half narrating what repairs she’s making, like a tutorial, and half venting about the job.

“I’m responsible for this whole thing myself,” she says, reaching down for a radiviewer. “I mean, they gave me a couple of droids to help out with the bigger parts, things I need more than one pair of hands for, but most of it I’m supposed to manage on my own. And then my superior told me right before my shift that Kylo-kriffing-Ren wants it finished two days from now! Here, hold this up for me.”

She commands without thinking, and it takes a moment of his hesitation to realize what she’s just done. She’s a grunt, an organic droid to these people, the very bottom of the totem pole. Orders are to be taken, not given.

Steeling herself, Rey sneaks a glance over her shoulder.

Her friend stands up, stiff as an old man, and walks over to her. A gloved hand reaches around her shoulder to hold the radiviewer in place. Rey breathes out her silent relief and goes about carefully extracting the tiny screws hidden in the panel.

R'iia’s breath, he is huge – the top of her head barely clears his chin. It feels like standing beside a cliff face, if that cliff face had been baked by the sun all afternoon. Now she is distracted – by his warmth; the way he breathes in slow, measured breaths; the way his arm trembles ever so slightly in front of her.

“Isn’t this what the droids are for?” he asks, and she is distracted by the low timber of his voice behind her.

She swallows, her mouth a little dry.

“Well, you wanted a distraction,” she says quietly. “The best one I know of is work.”

She takes a deep breath to steady herself and then makes short work of the rest of the screws, which she deposits in his proffered hand.

“Done,” she announces. “Thank you.”

He takes a step back, dropping the radiviewer and then the screws into her palms.

Even his hands are huge.

“Do you think you’ll be done in two days?” he asks.

Rey crouches and deposits the screws into the toolbox. “I don’t think I have a choice. Kylo Ren himself will probably boot me out of the airlock if I don’t. Apparently he’s antsy to take back off for something. It’s a pity there aren't any other ships on this giant star destroyer,” she adds sarcastically.

He hesitates, searching her face with that inscrutable gaze. “Isn’t this a step up from computer consoles and wall panels? You said you were bored.”

“Oh, massively.” She returns her attention to the exposed panel, carefully extracting the shorted out wiring that needs replaced. “To get my hands on an  _ Upsilon _ -class ship? It’s gorgeous. It’s just – you know --”

“Know what?”

Her hand waves about, as if that could dislodge the words from her throat. “They demand the impossible! They ignore all sense and sanity to push people like me to perform beyond what we’re capable of, without any care whatsoever about what it’s doing to us. Like we’re droids and if we overheat or short out then they’ll just replace us with someone else. It’s --”

She huffs out a frustrated breath.

“Bullshit.”

She whirls around, a scathing retort on her tongue, but there isn’t a trace of mockery in his gaze.

“I understand,” he says, and his eyes are haunted. “Our own inadequacies can be . . . frustrating. But if we aren’t pushed, we never grow.”

Rey snorts. “There’s a difference between guiding someone down a cliff and pushing them off of it.”

“And how do you tell the difference?”

The question makes her pause. “I’m not sure,” she says. “The feeling?”

He snorts. “Feelings are misleading. Pain is instructive – yet that doesn’t stop most from shying away from it. Nostalgia holds us back, keeps us from being who we were meant to be, but most people cling to it.”

Rey swallows. The words ring bright and clear in some hollow place in her.

_ Pain is instructive – _ the pain of the fall, of scraping jagged metal, of Unkar Plutt and the back of his hand. All things that have taught her strength, skill, survival.

_ Nostalgia holds us back, keeps us from being who we were meant to be _ – If Unkar had slowly starved her out, how long would Rey be waiting in that desolate wasteland of a planet, frozen in stasis, for people who were clearly never coming for her?

And yet, something feels off about his words. They are spoken with the conviction of someone else, repeated as if by rote. Unquestioned.

It nags at her, like a blister in her mouth – a feeling, a conviction of her own that she can’t quite put into words.

Rey returns to her work, narrating her tasks for his amusement, and he seems content to lean against the far wall and watch her.

An hour or so later, the man bids her goodbye.

“Get some sleep,” she says, offering him a small smile. “Hopefully, the next time I see you you won’t look like shit.”

“No promises” he sighs, and leaves.

She doesn’t mean to. A mistake like this could cost her her job or even her life if the droids short circuited something. The last thing Rey remembers is sitting down against the interior wall, holding her water bottle and desperately wishing it was caf. Her body still hasn’t adjusted to her night cycle shifts, and she sleeps fitfully during the day shift without getting any significant rest.

The next thing she knows, something is shaking her shoulder, and Rey lashes out instinctively, kicking as hard as she can before her eyes even open,

A strong grip wraps around her calf. Her eyes snap open.

The man in black crouches before her, cradling her leg in his hand, her boot a breath away from kicking him square in the chest. Her fingers scratch against the floor, reaching for a staff no longer there.

“Oh my God,” she gasps. “I’m so sorry.”

He releases his grip on her leg and stands up. “Don’t be. I startled you. I should have known better. You’re used to sleeping alone, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’m still . . . adjusting.”

He holds out a hand, and she gratefully allows him to pull her up.

“Sleeping on the job?” His head tilts to the side, and it’s hard to tell whether or not he’s teasing her with those intense eyes.

“I was only resting my eyes,” she protests. “Just for a minute.”

“Sure you were,” he says, the side of his mouth quirking ever so slightly in what could possibly be a smile if you squinted. “I guess you need this now more than ever.”

He nods over the caf that lies on the floor next to where she was sleeping. It’s miraculously still upright, despite her thrashing.

“You are just a beautiful human being,” she says gratefully.

She wants to do something insane, like take his face in her hands and . . .

No. Nope. Rey takes that thought and crumples it up and tosses it aside like the wrapper to her ration packs. Then she buries it in a long drink of caf.

“I think the night shift is starting to get to me,” she says, wiping sleep from her eyes. “I better get started on these fuel lines. You’re not going to snitch on me, are you?”

“So long as you don’t snitch about me sneaking off to give you caf every night.”

Rey smiles at him. “What do they call this? Mutually assured destruction?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, thank God, because I nearly got fired just for wearing the sleeves of my jumpsuit down. I can’t imagine what would happen to me if they caught me  _ sleeping _ . Kylo Ren would probably run me through with that laser sword  _ personally _ .”

Something twitches across his normally impassive face. It passes too fast for Rey to recognize it.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he says, his tone almost  _ too  _ nonchalant.

It occurs to Rey that this man might actually work under Kylo Ren and can’t speak out against him. Hearing Rey complain about Kylo Ren might be putting him in the awkward position of keeping it quiet versus reporting her. What a way to thank him after all he’s done for her! She resolves to keep her mouth shut from now on.

“These fuel lines aren’t going to fix themselves,” she says with forced lightness.

“Do you . . . need any help?”

Guilt twists her even more. “Why?” she finds herself asking.

“Beg pardon?”

Rey fixes her gaze on those expressive eyes of his, the ones that always do a piss poor job of hiding his emotions.

“Why do you want to help me? Why are you always giving me things? You get nothing out of it. In fact, it’s a risk. Why am I worth it?”

He looks at her the way Rey looks at long tangling lines of Aurebesh or a puzzle of old wiring or a map of the endless corridors of this ship.

“I don’t know,” he says almost too softly to hear. “I just . . . feel like I should.” He tilts his head to the side. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“No,” she says, surprised at how immediately it bursts from her. “I always like your company. And I never turn down someone to help me with my tools.”

Something else spasms across his face. She thinks it might be relief. “Then I’ll stay. If only to make sure you don’t fall asleep again.”

“It’s about who benefits.”

She’s on the floor again, double checking the fuel line even though no small part of her relishes the idea of Kylo Ren exploding on takeoff. It’s nearing the end of her last night on the ship, and she’s done with most of the repairs. Now it’s just to check and triple check that everything’s in working order.

Outside, her two droids are replacing the scored panels with new ones that gleam like a mirror.

“What?” he asks. He sits less than a foot away, against the walls, legs crossed, posture perfect.

“Your question from the other day. How can you tell the difference between shoving someone off a cliff and helping them down it,” she says. “It’s about who is benefiting from it. It’s easy to push someone off a cliff. You suffer no consequences from it. You’re not involved in the pain of their growth or their failure. To guide someone down takes effort. It takes commitment. It teaches through patience and by example. Hand me the radiviewer, please.”

He obediently places the tool in her outstretched hand.

“Patience is not the only way to learn,” he says. “It doesn’t work for everyone.”

“You think pain is a better teacher?”

His eyes are dark and fathomless. “You only need to learn the lesson once. And then you never forget.”

The weight of his gaze becomes too much, and Rey darts her gaze back to the task at hand.

“You’re not wrong,” she says softly. “I’ve learned a lot from pain. But the real question is: who gets something out of it?” She gestures around her, at the tools scattered around her. “Pushing me to complete a week’s worth of mechanics in three days does not make me a better mechanic. It just makes me miserable. But Kyl –  _ certain people –  _ on the other hand, get their impatience rewarded without having to lift a finger themselves.”

She looks up at him, at his dark and sleepless gaze, the gaunt line of his jaw, the faint scarring on his cheek. He spends his time here with her instead of recuperating from whatever he’s gotten himself into. Which means he’s afraid of sleep.

“Who is benefiting from your pain? Are you sure it’s you?”

He stares back, his eyes a swirl of many emotions that are at odds with the careful neutrality of the rest of him. Too many to name.

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” he says finally.

She shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe you don’t think about it enough.”

“There’s nothing wrong in finding a higher purpose in giving yourself over to another,” he says, but his words are soft, almost hesitant. Like he has to convince himself.

“I wouldn’t know much about it,” she admits. “I’ve been on my own so long. My first taste of it has been here, and I’ll tell you, I’m not impressed.”

“So I’ve heard,” he says rather dryly.

Rey smiles and hops up out of the floor panel. “Come on. I’m going to run diagnostics in the cockpit. Those chairs are much more comfortable than the floor.”

There are two chairs in the cockpit. Two chairs of supple leather, wide cushions that conform to the contours of your body, with built in back support. Rey has avoided the cockpit as much as possible because she knew if she sunk down into one of those chairs, burdened with the exhaustion she carries along with her toolbox, she might never leave. They would have to pry her out with a stun baton.

Her friend heads straight for the pilot’s chair and sinks into it immediately, with the familiarity of a real pilot. It may not be this ship, but he definitely must have a ship of his own. Rey stands next to him and clears her throat pointedly.

His eyes flick up to hers.

“Do you want to run the diagnostics?” she asks. “Because I can’t reach them from the co-pilot’s chair.”

Realization dawns on him. “Oh. Right. Sorry.” He lifts himself out, and Rey steps back to give him space to squeeze past her and drop into the other chair. Once again, in the tight quarters of the cockpit, she’s suddenly aware of the sheer size of him. He looms over her like the shadow of her AT-AT during the sunset and feels just as warm in the cold sterile air of the ship.

Rey feels a little dizzy and drops into the pilot’s chair before she can analyze that thought any further.

“It’s alright,” she says. “Habit, I suppose.”

He says nothing, the silence around them tensing for a moment. Rey decides she's not going to ask. She doesn't want to know who he is or what he's up to or what his rank is in the First Order. It's highly possible that he's some kind of officer unofficially checking on her work quality or level of professionalism (she has yet to unzip her jumpsuit a second time despite the mutinous desire to do so).

He treats her with a kindness that no one does, save for her stormtrooper, and it can only exist through their mutual anonymity.

And she likes being able to talk to someone like a normal goddamn person without having to worry about chains of command and formalities and the level of kow-towing everyone expects around here.

So Rey focuses on her diagnostic tests and doesn’t push her curiosity further. As each test comes back with flashing green lights, she checks them off on her datapad.

After a little while she hears a strange noise from her companion and turns her head to find him . . .

Sleeping?

She leans over the arm and listens closely. It’s faint and inconsistent under the hum of the ship, but he is definitely snoring.

It’s the perfect opportunity to observe him, and Rey seizes it. Something in his features has always captured her attention, but she hadn’t been able to figure out what without staring at him like a weirdo. Now she leans even further over the armrest to gaze at him, like he was a sleeping prince in a folktale.

He looks like a sleeping prince, his unlined face peaceful in repose. His eyelashes like soot. She wants to sink her hands into his thick dark hair. It’s much longer than First Order regulation, and she wonders how he gets away with it. Perhaps it’s considered too glorious for such a sacrifice.

The people of Jakku look old, their outer skin aging faster than the rest of their bodies. Rey has escaped mostly unscathed because she’s young still, with the last vestiges of baby fat on her cheeks, and she spends more time inside the rusting, crumbling tombs of star destroyers than outside in the sun.

This man is old enough to have outgrown his baby fat, and yet his face remains unlined. It’s impossible to tell how old he is. Another mystery for her, on top of his name, his rank, his homeworld.

Perhaps that’s what intrigues her about him.

Perhaps it’s the way that his nose, his mouth, the glimpses of his ears, look awkward if taken individually, yet together create such a striking face.

Or maybe it’s that Rey has very little experience around men near her own age, who all looked hardened and world-weary, their eyes hungry with just the barest hint of restraint. She can honestly say her mysterious companion is the most beautiful person she has never seen. It’s not a hard contest to win.

Curiosity somewhat satisfied, Rey steals another long look before turning her attention back to her diagnostics. There are bruises still underneath his delicate eyelashes. He needs the sleep.

She doesn’t disturb him until she has satisfied all of the tests and double checked all potential issues. Besides the outer panels she has the droids replacing, the ship is as good as new.

Until Kylo Ren’s next firefight with the Resistance.

Her shift nearing its end, Rey returns to the cockpit and kneels down beside the man. She doesn’t have a name or even a title to use to wake him. But he could lash out like she did if she suddenly shakes him.

She reaches out and lightly brushes her finger down the bridge of her nose, just enough to tickle, like an insect or a breeze.

“Hey,” she says, her voice barely above a murmur. “Time to wake up. My shift is almost over.”

His face betrays no sign of consciousness, and then, faster than should be humanly possible, his hand pulls her finger away from his face. His eyes snap open a second later.

“I was asleep,” he says, his voice low and rumbly in a way that definitely contributes to his overall attractiveness.

It does not sound like a question, but Rey answers it anyway. “Yes. For a while, actually. I’m done with all of my tests. Kylo’s ship is as good as new once those droids are finished.”

His dark eyes hold hers for a long moment. His hand does not let go. It’s warm, despite the chill of the ship. Rey does not pull away.

“Why didn’t you wake me earlier?” he asks.

“It looked like you needed it,” she says softly.

His eyes get a faraway gleam in them. “It’s been a long time since I slept well. And longer still around other people.”

“These are comfortable chairs,” she offers, trying to lighten the sudden heaviness in the room.

She understands his meaning. Falling asleep in this ship with her put him in a deeply vulnerable position. Rey, light-fingered from scavenging, could have robbed him of his credits, his identification. She could have hurt him easily and profoundly with any number of her tools.

And yet he did sleep, deeply and fearlessly.

What does that say about him, about his life, that he fears a nameless girl he knows nothing about less than anyone else he knows?

“You asked me why I come to see you, despite the risk. You think I don’t get anything out of it, but I do.”

Rey can’t tear herself away from the sharp intensity of his gaze. His hand burns in hers.

“Being around you is the only time I ever feel any peace,” he admits.

Rey doesn’t know what to say to such a starkly vulnerable admission, from such a guarded man at that. Slowly, she reaches out her other hand and places it lightly against his cheek. She resists the urge to slide her fingers into his hair. She resists a lot of urges, actually, especially the urge to crawl in that chair with him and find out what a kiss feels like.

Judging from the way his eyes dip to her mouth, she might not be the only one struggling. He leans almost instinctively closer to her, his fingers clutching hers tightly. Rey’s heart flies into her throat, beating wildly. She gives up resisting and skates her fingers over his ear and into his hair, which feels exactly as soft as it looks. They are so close she feels the shaky breath he lets out as her thumb brushes against the shell of his ear.

His nose brushes against hers – Rey’s eyes flutter closed –

A sharp clang echoes in the ship. They both spring apart, Rey’s hands jerking back to herself so quickly she might have tugged his hair.

One of the droids rolls down the short corridor to the cockpit.

“The repairs have been completed,” it trills to her in binary. “Please inspect.”

“Yes, of course,” she says, blood roaring in her ears. “Thank you very much.”

It beeps an acknowledgment and begins its journey back to the hangar. Her friend rises suddenly to his feet, and Rey quickly stands and backs up to give him room.

“I have to go,” he says tightly. “I’ve been here too long.”

Rey swallows and nods, tasting the sharp tang of guilt. People could be looking for him. He could have missed a shift because she let him sleep. Not to mention rewarding his trust in her by invading his personal space.

She wants to call out to him as he sweeps down the exit ramp, but the words stick in her throat.

Rey doesn’t see him for several days. Kylo Ren takes off in his newly restored ship in less than one day cycle, and life returns to normal. No more calls dragging her from sleep or dinner or her other mounting responsibilities.

No more visits from her mysterious friend.

She wonders if perhaps she frightened him away, if her actions had shattered the fragile truce between them. The thought puts her in a dark mood, and she’s happy to throw herself into routine maintenance checks and cleanings. Every so often she and FN-2187 catch dinner together when their shifts align, or he will pop up for a quick chat on his way to whatever degrading task they punish him with. She wonders what he does to earn tasks such as spot cleaning the sewage pipes and trash compactors.

It’s the only bright spot in the blurring sameness of her days.


	3. Part 1 Chapter 3

She knows the moment Kylo Ren returns because something changes in the atmosphere. Stormtroopers walk quickly down the hallway, out of step with each other, their helmets crackling with whispers and mutterings. Looks are thrown her way by the other maintenance workers as she passes them by.

Kylo Ren has returned, and he is _not_ in a great mood, from the looks of things. Rey sighs and looks down at her orders. There’s what sounds like a shortage issue in one of the keyboards of a computer terminal five decks up. An easy fix, something that will take her less time to repair than the un-casing of the computer itself just to get to it.

It’s probably on purpose. Why give her a lengthy job when any minute she’s going to get pulled to repair whatever he’s destroyed in his latest tantrum?

To her surprise, however, she gets through nearly the entire job without one interruption. Perhaps Kylo Ren has learned to meditate, she muses, as she inserts the last of the magnascrews. Or he took his anger out on his mysterious Knights of Ren. Or maybe he was a mature adult for once and kept his anger to himself rather than --

Rey feels him before she sees him, the back of her neck prickling seconds before his heavy footsteps burst into the room.

She whirls around, hands braced on the console. He looms in the doorway, his saber already activated and sounding like the taste of ozone.

For a long moment they do nothing but stare at each other. Rey is frozen with horror and he . . . perhaps he didn’t expect to find anyone in this admittedly rarely used records room.

"Get. Out." he snarls, his words almost muffled by the static of his helmet.

Rey scrambles to her feet, heart pounding, the magnadriver clattering to the floor. There's barely enough room to squeeze between the wall of his body and the actual wall, and the heat of him sears through her clothes as she ducks out into the hallway.

Goddamn it! Out of the literally thousands of rooms on this ship, he picked _this one_?

She turns around just in time to see him raise his laser sword up –

"Not the console!" she shouts, the words torn from her lips.

He pauses, laser sword held in a hand trembling with restraint, and Rey covers her own horrified gasp with her hand because what the _fuck why would she say that?!_

"What?" The word drops and shatters between them. His head is cocked ever so slightly, but he does not turn around to face her.

"I just fixed it," she breathes. "The lights in the walls are easier to replace."

She's heard all kinds of horror stories by now -- Force choking, throwing someone across the room with the flick of his finger like a rag doll, making some poor bastard writhe in pain on the floor with just a look. And all of that for the barest hint of dissent. So what's going to happen to her for daring to tell him what to do?

Nothing, it turns out. Kylo Ren steps further into the room and begins beating the wall with huge erratic swings. The screech of tearing metal and the popping of shattering bulbs follow her down the hallway.

When it's safe to return, Rey notices that the console remains untouched.

She has to wait on wall panel replacements before she can get started, which takes several hours. Apparently, they are in short supply, and extras had to be delivered by a nearby destroyer.

By the time she gets started, her original shift is nearly over. Rey surveys the damage with a despairing eye. Kylo Ren destroyed every single panel in the room. Another maintenance crew already swept in and cleared the debris, leaving just the bare walls and exposed wiring. A ladder and a stack of lights and panels sit on top of the pristine computer console.

Rey runs her fingers over the freshly repaired keyboard. Had that really only been this morning? Why did he leave it alone? It can’t have been just because she asked. Someone like Kylo Ren doesn’t have the empathy or even restraint to take someone else’s desires into consideration.

She clears such questions from her head. It does no good trying to understand a violent, twisted mind like Kylo Ren’s. Instead, she focuses her attention on the work ahead.

“Are they making you do this all alone?”

A wide grin splits her face at the sound of his voice behind her. She turns around and sees her friend leaning against the door frame, arms crossed, surveying the piles of paneling and lighting and wires strewn around the room.

“Yes, but not all at once,” she says. “It’s not a room that gets used often, so the pressure to clean it up isn’t as strong. I’m getting it started tonight and finishing it tomorrow.”

He looks around again. “It’s a lot of work for one person.”

Rey shrugs. “You were right – I have a reputation now. I suppose it’s efficient to put someone on the job who you know is going to get it done right than take chances on someone else.”

“Or someone’s testing you.”

“I think the universe is testing me,” she says with a snort.

She takes a closer look at him. He doesn’t move from the doorway, as if hesitant to come in. It’s a stark contrast to the way he would sit on the floor with her in Kylo’s ship. It makes her heart squeeze in her chest.

“So, how have you been?” she asks lightly. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

She immediately busies herself with attaching new lights in the current panel so she doesn’t give away how much she both needs and fears his answer.

“I’ve been off ship,” he says. “I just got back today.”

“Oh.” Relief blooms in her chest. “I thought maybe I . . . scared you away,” she admits.

His footsteps echo slightly as he enters the room. She looks over and sees him lean up against the console behind her.

“You didn’t.”

The admission gives her the courage turn around and face him completely.

“I’m sorry,” she says, the words that had caught in her throat the last time they saw each other. “If I made you uncomfortable – or invaded your space.”

The intensity sharpens in his eyes, so noticeable even in the dim glow of the room.

“Don’t be,” he says softly. “You did nothing wrong.”

Her stomach flips, not unlike the feeling of free fall while scaling one of the scrapped star destroyers on Jakku.

“I have some questions for you,” he says and he sounds almost hesitant. “You grew up on Jakku, right?”

This sudden line of questioning throws her. “Yeah.”

“What’s it like there?”

“It’s . . . a desert,” she says haltingly. “It’s very hot. It’s got a lot of sand. Sparsely populated. Not really different from other desert planets. Why do you ask? If you’re taking a vacation, there are better places to go.”

She sees another hint of a smile on his face.

“The First Order is looking for something, and they think it might be somewhere on that planet. I’m going there soon to find it.”

“They think it’s on _Jakku_? Nobody ever goes to Jakku.”

“Exactly.”

“What are they looking for?”

He hesitates, the silence stretching taut between them.

“I need to know any potential dangers, what the major settlements are, what the indigenous life is like,” he says finally.

“Ah. Top secret,” she says with a levity she has to force over the bad feeling that starts coiling up. “Well, you have to watch out for sandstorms, definitely. During this time of year a particularly bad one can whip up. They call it the _Breath of R’iia,_ and the sand can strip skin from bone in very little time. You can tell because it will look like clouds on the distant horizon, but there are _never_ clouds on Jakku.”

He nods. “Good. What else?”

They talk while she works. Rey tells him about the nightwatcher worms, other scavengers, about slavers that slink around the busier spaceports, how to protect his ship from people like the Teedos, who would strip it of parts before the sun went down. She doesn’t know a whole lot about other settlements because she never left Niima Outpost.

It makes her homesick again to talk about it. When she left, Rey had never wanted to set her sights on Jakku again, but now she longs for a visit.

“You know, it might be worth your while to take me with you as a guide, rather than deal with this by yourself,” she says.

“No,” he says with an immediacy that frankly stings.

“I’m more than just a mechanic, you know,” she says, trying not to sound hurt.

“I know,” he assures her. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

Rey laughs. “Jakku is my _home_. I’d be more worried about yourself.”

“Jakku is not the only danger I’m worried about,” he says darkly. “You’re safer here. And I’m not going to be down there long.”

“Alright,” she says. She buries her disappointment and returns her focus to her work. “What else do you want to know?”

“What kind of –”

“ _There_ you are!”

A new voice barks at them from the doorway. Rey places the cultured accent immediately as one of the higher officers, and her stomach plunges down to the floor.

Her heart joins it when she turns around to see the unmistakable red hair of General Hux.

Rey feels like she might throw up.

“ _What_ the hell are you doing here?” he demands her friend, ignoring her entirely. “We’re about to drop out of hyperspace --”

“Hux,” he friend growls. “Get. Out.”

His tone, the sudden and vicious anger in it, sends a jolt of stomach-churning familiarity through her.

“ _Excuse you_ ,” the General hisses. “You might be the great Kylo Ren, but I am _not_ an errand boy or a – _grease monkey,”_ he adds, waving his hand at her. “I have better things to do than track you down like some kind of nanny because you won’t turn on your comm –”

The General clutches his throat suddenly, eyes bugging out. An invisible force lifts him up off the floor until his feet dangle.

Her friend – the man – _Kylo Fucking Ren_ reaches out his hand, his eyes narrowed and murderous.

“If you do not get the _fuck out of this room,_ I will kill you,” he says, voice shaking with barely-contained fury. His fingers twitch, and the General thrashes for a moment before crumpling to the floor.

The glare he throws Kylo Ren is pure and utter poison. But he staggers to his feet and leaves without a word.

The entire time, Rey has watched in a haze, like she’s in a dream – a nightmare – but the sight of him leaving snaps her back into reality.

As horrid as General Hux could be from the stories she’s heard, she would take his fury over being suddenly alone with Kylo Ren.

He turns back to her, pinning her down with wild eyes, and Rey’s heart seizes up in her throat. If she had her staff or a blaster or _something_ she might stand a chance of getting out of here. But she has nothing except her fists and a hydrospanner and he can choke people _with his mind_.

“That wasn’t – I’m not – you weren’t supposed to find out.”

What is he going to do to her now that she knows?

He breathes hard, like an angry bantha, but she barely hears it over the roaring in her ears. She’s smaller and faster, she could dart around the other side of the console and slip out –

But he could just drag her back with a wave of his hand.

A sob escapes her tight throat, tears slipping from the corner of her eye, and she’s too afraid to feel ashamed of them. She’s too afraid to even breathe.

He’s got her well and truly trapped, bearing down on her like the Breath of R’iia as he closes what little distance remains between them.

“Don’t – ” he says.

Don’t what? Don’t run? Don’t scream? Don’t resist?

He lifts his hand to her face, and Rey jerks back out of instinct, colliding with the wall behind her. Immediately he recoils back, looking as if she had slapped him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he says, almost pleading. The hand that had reached for her – that had pulled her out of floor panels, that had clutched her fingers as he slept, that had given her cup after cup of caf – clenches suddenly into a fist.

Hysterical laughter bubbles up in her throat, and she clenches her mouth shut to keep it from escaping.

For a long, excruciating moment, they just look at each other. Rey’s chest stutters and heaves when she remembers to breathe, her every muscle coiled and waiting. She searches his features for any hint of his anger, of his intentions, hating how both strange and familiar the lines of his face have become to her.

He just looks at her, eyes wide with torment, his gaze flitting from her eyes to her mouth to her neck, like he’s trying to memorize every inch of her.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, so soft she barely hears it.

Then he turns around and leaves.

Rey wants to do a lot of things. She wants to scream. She wants to sink to the floor and cry. She wants to destroy something in her own Kylo Ren-style tantrum.

But Rey can do none of those things. She has a job to finish, and the First Order has never cared if she got enough sleep or ate between shifts. What makes her think they would allow her to take a break to hyperventilate?

So, with shaking hands, with a chest that feels too tight, with tears that keep leaking out and blurring the holes where the magnascrews go in, Rey goes back to installing lights and wall panels with her usual systematic efficiency.

The sound of footsteps grows closer and louder, and her heart seizes up inside her again. She ducks down behind the console, trying to quiet her erratic breathing.

“Rey?”

FN-2187. A sigh of relief punches its way out of her.

“I’m here,” she says, standing up.

Her friend – her _real_ friend – stands in the door, his helmet under one arm.

“I dropped something,” she adds lamely, but he ignores it entirely

“Thank god I found you.” He rushes to her and then stops suddenly at the sight of her face.

“You’re crying. What happened? What’s wrong?”

She stares back at him and notes that he also looks seconds away from a full blown panic attack. Sweat dots his brow.

“What’s wrong with you?” she counters.

“I’ve been called down to Jakku,” he says.

Her heart stalls for a minute. “But you’re – you’re maintenance. You’re not combat.”

“I know,” he says rather grimly. “They promoted me. I just got the orders a bit ago. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

He reaches his hand up to her face and wipes her cheek. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing,” she lies. “Just stress. Too much work, too little time.”

“That’s right, you have to deal with that bastard’s mess on top of your other work.”

He wipes the other cheek, his thumb calloused, and Rey basks in the comfort of that small gesture.

“Look, I don’t have a lot of time. I should be down in the hangar by now; they’re gonna have my hide. But I don’t know what’s gonna happen down there, and I just . . . wanted to say goodbye.”

Rey swallows, her throat suddenly tight with fresh tears. “For now,” she says. “Goodbye for now. And good luck.”

He pulls her into a hug, his armor hard and cold against her uniform. Rey grips him back just as tightly, and then she pushes him away.

“Go, before you get demoted,” she tries to joke.

“Don’t tempt me,” he says with a weak smile. He puts his helmet back on. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t wait up for me.”

 _Don’t worry,_ she thinks. _I will_.

Jakku glows like an ember amid the darkness of space. Rey catches glimpses of it through the viewports as she heads down to her bunk after her final shift.

She is sick with worry, her dinner gone untouched.

Did Kylo Ren find out about her friendship with FN-2187? What if he got irrationally jealous? What if he dragged FN-2187 down to Jakku on a suicide mission as some way to punish her?

The rational part of her brain argues that Kylo Ren had no time to suddenly change FN-2817’s orders because he had been with her, pelting her with questions about Jakku. But fear doesn’t listen to rationality.

Not to mention there is no _rational_ way to explain what happened between her and Kylo Ren. Why would someone like Kylo Ren even look twice at maintenance nobody like her, a desert rat from a miserable spit of a planet that only just now became relevant? What was the point of learning about her, listening to her, sneaking her caf, as she cleaned up the mess he had just finished creating?

She had no value to him outside of piecing together the consequences of his destructive tendencies. And even though she’s good at her job, she’s not the only one.

Any other person might consider loneliness or empathy as a motivator, but Kylo Ren’s deeds speak for himself. He cares for nothing and no one.

Maybe it was just a sick game to him, to see how far he could manipulate a lonely nobody until he broke her with the truth.

(But when the truth came out, he was the one who looked broken.)

She refused to mourn him, but that was easier said than done.

Tomorrow she would request a ship transfer. And when it came time to renew her contract, Rey decided she would walk instead.

She took the First Order’s money, sure. She used them to keep from starving, to give her some hope of a future, but that didn’t mean she supported anything they did.

But it’s been easy to forget, in the mundane drudgery of her life here, just how monstrous the First Order really is. Her thoughts consist of checking off her daily assignments, sneaking an extra roll in the cafeteria, trying to hold out until she can sleep.

Rey had never had the luxury of naivety, and she kicks herself now that working here had lulled her into a false sense of complacency.

She needed out.

When the day cycle begins, Rey drags herself from her bunk, having gained no rest at all. Already the hallway outside her room buzzes with frantic gossip.

Kylo Ren had come back with a prisoner. A Resistance officer. There had been a skirmish, and several stormtroopers had gotten killed.

The pit of her stomach plummets.

“Do you know who?” she asks at breakfast, trying to keep her tone level and almost nonchalant.

The woman she had eavesdropped on glances over at her and shrugs before going back to her conversation. Apparently, the Resistance officer was famously dashing.

Rey fights a growl of frustration and shoves the rest of her muffin in her mouth before getting up. There had to be documentation of who left and returned from such an important mission. All Rey had to do was find it, and she had the perfect room and the perfect excuse to do so.

She had an hour before her shift started, but Rey, ever the dutiful worker – started back to the records room early to finish installing the wall panels.

As it turns out, Rey didn’t need to slice into the console in the records room – she didn’t even make it to the records room. FN-2187 showed up in the hallway outside of the maintenance lift and dragged her immediately into the nearest empty alcove.

“Oh kriffing R’iia,” she says, flinging her arms around him. “They said some of you died, I didn’t know what to think.”

He grips her tightly for a moment and then pushes her away.

“Rey, look at me,” he says.

His eyes are just as wild as before he left, his face covered in sweat. He throws another look behind them and then pulls her into the empty room next to them.

“What are you doi-”

“Shh,” he hisses. “I can’t have anyone hearing this.”

He puts his hands on her shoulders. They are shaking.

“What do you think about getting the hell off this ship?”

“Yes,” she says immediately, relief breaking through her chest. “I’m in.”

“It involves pissing off a lot of people,” he warns.

“Sounds great.”

“We’ll probably be fugitives for a while.”

“Don’t care. When do we start?”

He squeezes her shoulders. “Now.”

He keeps the plan simple: Rey finds some bullshit job to do in the hangar bay, slinking around and looking busy. No one looks twice at people like her, so no one will question it. When she sees him and the famously dashing Resistance pilot show up in the hangar, they all three need to jump in the nearest TIE fighter and get the hell out.

It’s not a great plan by any means. But it’s the only one they’ve got on such short notice. The Resistance pilot is slated for interrogation any minute now, so they have no time to waste.

Just in case, she slices into her datapad and types up fake orders to run diagnostics on the TIE fighters. They won’t hold up to intense scrutiny, since she couldn’t remember exactly how to spell her supervisor’s name, but hopefully no one will even ask to see her datapad in the first place.

To her relief, there are other maintenance workers already in the hangar, pushing carts of supplies and wiping down Kylo’s ship. Rey fights a surprising stab of possessive jealousy over the sight of other people in that ship.

Her orders are looked at by the head officer in the hangar, but he spares them barely more than a cursory glance and points her to a stack of fighters.

Just as she reaches the steps of the first TIE fighter, FN-2187 and the pilot burst into the hanger. The Resistance pilot sticks out immediately, his grimy clothes and dirt-smeared face so at odds with the polished floors and immaculate uniforms of the First Order.

They catch every eye they pass, not that her friend notices. He gazes almost frantically around the hangar until his eyes lock on hers. His pace speeds up a bit, drawing even more attention.

 _Look away. Look away,_ Rey thinks, desperately. Her heart slams erratically in her chest as she watches them slowly make their way across the hanger.

To her surprise, no one else pays them any mind. FN-2187 stalls for a moment when a group of officers pass their way, but they don’t even spare him or the pilot a glance. When the group passes, there’s a temporary lull in people and FN-2187 stops their nonchalant pacing to drag the pilot running towards the stairs.

Rey prays the entire time for no one to notice.

“Hey,” he says breathlessly. Rey shoves him and the pilot behind the fighter so they can wrestle off the hand cuffs.

“You made it,” she says.

The pilot _is_ rather ruggedly handsome on closer inspection. He looks up at her in confusion.

“She’s coming with us?” he asks. “How the hell are we fitting three people in a two person ship?”

“I’ll sit in someone’s lap,” she says. “I’m light.”

“That might be true, sweetheart, but we’re not gonna make it far with an unbalanced ship,” he says. “I gotta get back to Jakku, so we’ll pick something up there.”

Rey nods even as FN-2187 blanches. “If we can get to Niima Outpost, I can get us a ship,” she says.

“In the ship! _In the ship_!” FN-2187 hisses. “We’ll figure it out later.”

The pilot and FN-2187 jump into the ship, and Rey climbs in after them. She sits on FN-2187’s lap so they can tag-team the guns. It’s definitely a tight fit – the top of her head is dangerously close to smacking the roof of the cockpit, and the safety harness doesn’t fit around the both of them.

“Uh, Rey?” he asks, clearly uncomfortable.

She’s not happy about it herself. “I’ve got the guns. You just hold on and make sure I don’t slip.”

The TIE fighter jolts and shakes, the pilot already throwing it out of dock. Rey lurches forward and comes close to smacking her forehead against the glass of the viewport, before FN-2187’s hands grab her securely by the waist.

The officers and other workers are almost too stunned to react to the fighter’s sudden undocking. Rey braces herself for shooting that doesn’t come.

“We might actually get out of here!” The pilot shouts.

The ship lurches forward as he guns the engines – and then snaps suddenly back. The engine makes a dangerous whining sound.

They’ve stalled.

“What’s wrong?” FN-2187 shouts.

“Someone didn’t unlock the docking cables,” Rey shouts, unable to glare over FN-2187’s shoulder at the pilot.

“We have bigger problems,” the pilot says, his voice low with dread.

Then Rey sees a hooded, dark stain of a man walk out into the middle of the hangar.

Kylo Ren.

No wonder no one was shooting at them.

He faces her side of the ship, cape blowing slightly in the wind of the stalling engines. Even through his mask she can feel the weight of his eyes on her.

Her fingers skate over the cannon trigger. She could blast him to pieces but not without taking the lives of the other workers, most of whom were just like her.

“Shoot him!” the pilot yells, gunning at the engine in an attempt to break out of the cables.

Something in her rebels deeply at the thought of killing him.

 _Being around you is the only time I feel any peace_.

But Kylo Ren experiences no such hesitation. He holds out his hand, just as he did to choke General Hux – Rey braces herself for her throat closing up –

The cables snap and fall away, and the TIE fighter shoots out of the hangar like a rock from a slingshot. Blaster fire bounces harmlessly against their shields, and then they’re too far for it to make any difference.

The pilot whoops and hollers in victory. Rey can’t imagine the amount of relief he must feel, having so close a call.

“We did it, Rey!” FN-2187 says. He squeezes his arms around her in a makeshift hug. “We got off that goddamn ship!”

“We’re not out of the desert yet,” she says, though she can’t help but smile back at him. “They’re going to fire at us any second.”

“She’s right. If those cables hadn’t snapped when they did, Kylo Ren would have fucked us up,” says the pilot. “Brace yourself and – Rey, is it? – get ready with those cannons. I assume you know how to use them?”

“It’s not hard to figure out,” she says.

She knows the force of the TIE’s engines would have never been enough to snap the cables on its own, especially with the weight disparity of a third passenger.

Kylo Ren had reached out right before they snapped.

He had helped them escape.

Rey has no idea why he would do such a thing or what that could mean for them.

But she has no time to think for answers as they streak towards Jakku.


	4. Part 2 Chapter 1

The first time Rey feels like she can catch her breath is when they land on Takodana. They stop on the outskirts of a massive, ancient castle (that’s apparently a cantina?) while Poe hails the Resistance inside. Han makes a point to exit the ship and tinker around with something on its exterior while this happens.

Rey takes a moment to get her bearings.

She’s experienced more stress and heart-pounding adventure in the last two days than she has in her entire life. From rescuing BB-8 from the Teedos and narrowly avoiding getting eaten by a nightwatcher worm, to stealing the kriffing _Millennium Falcon_ from Unkar Plutt just as the First Order invaded Niima Outpost, to getting dragged into a rathtar-filled standoff with _Han Kriffing Solo_ and a bunch of other smuggler gangs –

Three months ago, Rey lived in almost total isolation, her days filled with only the sound of her own breathing and the wind whistling through the cracks of fallen star destroyers.

Now she’s escorting a Resistance hero and a BB unit containing the most sought after and top secret information in the galaxy while the entirety of the First Order hunts them down.

The only person who seems more antsy about their situation than her is Finn. She can’t exactly blame him. Apparently, Captain Phasma herself wanted him reeducated after his refusal to fight on Jakku. Rey shivers at the implications of what “reeducation” could possibly mean, and she doesn’t ask for details.

If they get recaptured by the First Order, Rey will just be dead, but Finn will be worse than dead.

Even sleep, stolen in snatches on the _Falcon_ as they cruise through hyperspace, gives her no relief.

All she did was dream of _him_ – stalking her from the shadows, chasing her down endless corridors of ship, on his knees begging her, but for what she doesn’t know.

But now, looking out at the sea of trees that spreads out before her and breathing in the sweetest, purest scent she has ever smelled, Rey feels a bit of peace creep inside her, swirling in her lungs. If only you could bury yourself in trees like you could in sand.

“Nice view, huh?”

Han Solo sidles up beside her.

“I’ve only ever seen pictures of trees,” she says. “And all that water . . . That’s more water than I would have ever encountered in my entire life, and it’s just _sitting there_.”

He gives her a look of distinct pity, but because he’s _Han Solo_ , Rey gives him a pass.

“I found something for you,” he says, handing her a small blaster. It looks powerful despite its size.

“I have my staff,” she says, “I can take care of myself.”

She made a point to scavenge it from her old home before they moved on to Niima Outpost. She’s never handled a blaster before.

“Oh, I saw. That’s why I’m giving it to you. I figured you might want something long range, you know . . .”

He shrugs, looking uncomfortable at his own generosity, and Rey smiles. She takes the gun and holds it out, aiming with one eye like she’s seen in the holos. Han gives her a dubious look.

“Do you know how to use one of those?”

“Yeah,” she says. “You just pull the trigger.”

He pushes her arm down. “There’s a little more to it than that. You got a lot to learn.”

She doesn’t miss the implication that he wants to be the one to teach her, and it warms something in her chest.

“Look, Rey,” he says, not looking at her. “I’ve been thinking on expanding the crew. A second mate, you know. Someone who can help out, keep up with Chewie and me – appreciates the _Falcon_.”

A grin splits her face as she turns to face him.

“Are you offering me a job?”

He glances up at her smile and then looks away, like it’s too much for him.

“I see how you handle things, you know, when Hot Shot Pilot’s not trying to hog my own kriffing ship,” he says. “It wouldn’t pay much. I’m not a very nice person.”

A sharp laugh bursts from Rey. “I worked maintenance for the First Order,” she says. “Trust me, I know very well what doesn’t pay much and who isn’t nice to me. You can only be an upgrade.”

His face changes instantly at the mention of the First Order – his expression closes up, a sudden wall, save for his eyes, which reveal deep pain.

Rey thinks she might have just colossally fucked up.

“I hated working for them,” she assures him hastily. “I couldn’t wait to get away. And I only did it because I was starving on Jakku, and I didn’t have a lot of options.”

“What ship were you on?” he demands.

“The . . . the _Finalizer_ ,” she admits.

The edge in his gaze sharpens intensely – like someone had just stabbed him with a knife.

“Did you ever see –” he cuts himself off abruptly.

Rey’s stomach clenches. Maybe he wants information. She was never privy to anything important, but she does know the layout of the ship. She'd give him anything.

“See what?”

Han gives her a long, searching look and then shakes his head.

“Never mind,” he says gruffly. “Look, I don’t care what you did to feed yourself. You want a job with me, you can have one.”

“I would love one,” she says softly.

He hesitates before he pats her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Then let’s hope we all get out of this in one piece, eh?”

“You two ready?”

Rey and Han turn around to see Poe and BB-8 walk down the ramp.

“What did the General say?” Han asks.

“Keep a low profile and get a fast ship,” he says. “Speaking of which, Rey, you gotta do something about that uniform. It’s still got First Order patches on it.”

“Oh, right!” Rey looks down at the small black patches that denoted her rank (lowest of the low) and her job (interchangeable grunt). They didn’t stick out very much against her dark grey jumpsuit, but it was still not a risk she wanted to take.

They didn’t have a knife on them, so Rey just unzips the front, tugs down the sleeves, and ties them around her waist, the patches hidden in the folds. She checks the front of her white shirt quickly for any insignia and finds none.

Her arms drink the faint sunshine that breaks through the clouds. Fucking stars but she’s white as a sheet. Nearly twenty years of sun-toasted skin bleached in only three months with the First Order.

“How is that?” she asks.

Poe peeps behind her back before nodding his assent. “You look like you just got off some freighter. It’s perfect.”

“You’ll fit right in,” says Han, winking at her.

“I thought the Resistance was going to pick us up while Han refueled,” Rey says.

“This place is a bar, somewhere to socialize and make deals,” Poe says. “If a ship were to show up for ten minutes and then leave again, it would look suspicious as hell. And we would probably be followed.”

“Followed?” Finn appears behind Poe. “By who? The First Order? Is the First Order here?”

Han and Rey exchange looks. Finn has been twitchy as a desert rat the entire trip. Rey might be stressed, but Finn is ten seconds away from a heart attack at any moment.

“All kinds of people are here,” says Poe. “Relax, buddy. Maz’ll get us in and out before anybody looks twice at us. And I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

He clasps Finn on the shoulder, and it’s the only time that Finn looks even remotely relaxed. Then he tosses a speculative look at Rey’s outfit.

“Did the General say anything else?” Han asks.

He and Poe exchange loaded expressions.

“No, she didn’t,” says Poe, and there’s a bit of sympathy in his gaze.

Han sighs. “Come on, Rey. I need a drink.”

Any hope of laying low dies the second a tiny alien woman glares across the crowded cantina and bellows “Han Solo!”

Instantly, every eye on the bar is on them. Even the music stops for a moment. Finn shrinks back against Poe, who also looks deeply uncomfortable.

Then she sighs and makes her way through the crowd, which seems to part for her like magic, and the music and chatter resume as if nothing had happened.

“Where’s my boyfriend?” she demands immediately.

Han gives Rey side-long look. “Chewie is with the _Falcon_.”

“I like that Wookiee,” she says, and her gaze slides over the rest of their party until they land on Poe. “ _Oh_. Why didn’t you say you had special company, Solo?”

“Hey, Maz,” says Poe. “Listen, we need a ship, and we need one fast.”

Maz glares up at him, and it’s potent despite her size. “Straight to the point, eh? What kind of greeting is that?”

“I said hey,” says Poe but he looks sheepish. “Sorry. The General says hi, by the way. But we’ve got to get something to her – immediately. And I think you know what it is.”

This time Maz gives Han a look heavy with something unsaid, and he squirms underneath her scrutiny.

“I can get you a ship,” she sighs. “For the meantime, have a drink or something to eat. It’s on the house.”

“We don’t really have time for –” Finn starts, but Poe claps him on the shoulder again and gives Maz his most heartwarming smile.

“You’re the best, darling. We’ll take a table in the back.”

Maz snorts and waves them away before she disappears back into the crowd.

“Does everybody know this woman?” Rey asks as they follow Han to one of the more secluded back tables.

“She’s run this watering hole for a thousand years,” says Han.

“And that’s not an exaggeration,” says Poe. “She really is that old.”

“You sure we can trust her?” Finn asks. “There’s a lot of . . .”

He falters, but Rey knows what he means to say. The room is full of bounty hunters, smugglers, and thieves. It’s not a reputable establishment by any means, but Rey figures that people who like to operate outside the rules probably wouldn’t give their loyalty to something with as many control issues as the First Order.

“Every wanted man in the galaxy has stopped by this place at one point,” says Han. “You’re nothing special.”

“Just . . . don’t look so nervous, buddy.” Poe says.

Finn snorts. “Thanks. That helps.”

He catches her eye across the table, and she knows, instantly, what he is trying to ask her. When their hyperspace flight to Takodana started, Finn pulled her into a spare room (closet maybe? There were a lot of dusty cloaks) and asked her if she wanted to run, to ditch Poe and the others the second they both knew BB-8 was on its way safely to the Resistance.

Neither of them had expected to get dragged into the Resistance. Poe’s rescue was their ticket out and a way to soothe Finn’s conscience. This slap-dash crazy adventure was not supposed go on this long, and it sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be what they traded the First Order for.

Rey hasn’t had a chance to tell Finn of Han’s offer of a job. It’s her best chance at freedom, and she wants it more than anything. But she doesn’t think the offer extends to Finn, and it gives her an uncomfortable choice – join Han Solo and leave Finn behind, or run off with Finn and leave Han Solo behind?

On one hand, Han Solo’s job offer gives her more freedom and security than she’s ever had in her life. She has no doubt that she would be happy to work for him, despite what he said about payments and kindness.

On the other hand, Finn is her best friend – her only friend, really – and she can’t bear the thought of abandoning him to potentially face the First Order alone – not after what he’s done to get her off that ship and out of Kylo Ren’s clutches.

But where would they go? How would they survive? Does Rey really want to live her life constantly on the run and looking over her shoulder?

She’s hoping, rather desperately, that Poe and his rugged grin and thick hair and immediate, almost supernatural bond with Finn will convince Finn to join up with the Resistance. After all, if the First Order really is adamant about hunting Finn down as he believes, wouldn’t the Resistance offer him the best hope of protection?

Her eyes dart over to Poe, who’s too busy scanning the surroundings for potential trouble to notice, and then back to Finn. Finn gives her the barest hint of a shrug – a sign of conflict. Well, she can work with that.

“What are you two doing?” Han asks. “You got some kind of Jedi mind thing going on?”

They jerk their gazes apart. “No,” says Rey, flushing guiltily.

“Well, look sharp,” he says gruffly. “You don’t want to be spacing out in a place like this.”

Just as he finishes speaking, a low, almost imperceptible hum permeates the air. Immediately, the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Finn shoots her another look, and she can feel it, like a tangible thread between them, his fear echoing hers.

Maz appears suddenly beside them, her eyes wide even underneath her magnifying goggles.

“The First Order,” she says, out of breath. “They were picked up on my scanners. You have minutes – if that – before they arrive. I have your ship on the outskirts – there’s a clearing to the west of here in the woods. You need to go _now_.”

Finn stands up so quickly the table shakes, Poe right behind him. Han grabs her wrist.

“We’re going on the _Falcon_. We’ll meet you two at the base. Send me the coordinates. I’ll find a way to get there without getting tailed. Come on, Rey.”

For the last time, Finn shoots her another look, desperate and fearful. Any chance they had to run and leave this behind has gone up in smoke.

“Hold on,” says Maz. She gives Rey a short but potent look of scrutiny. “I have something I need you to take. The First Order cannot find it here.”

She starts dragging Rey through the crowd with a shockingly strong grip before Rey can protest.

“Meet me at the _Falcon_ ,” Han shouts before he dives through the crowd as well.

Maz hauls Rey down a set of stairs, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the bar and cut into the stone of the foundation itself. The light grows darker with each step, but Maz dives downward without a second thought. If the stairs hadn’t been so wide and shallow, Rey would have knocked them both down.

Faintly, she starts hearing something – crying? It sounds like a little girl. Her stomach clenches. Is someone down here, in hiding from the First Order?

The crying grows louder as they descend into a storage keep. Sunlight filters down from vents in the ceiling, illuminating the stone hallway and the sealed metal doors that line it.

_No! No, please! Don’t leave me!_

The words grow louder and more distinct. Rey sucks in a sharp breath, feeling a sudden stab of grief. The crying sounds hauntingly familiar.

"Who's down here?" she asks sharply.

“No one's down here." 

"But I hear --"

Maz tugs sharply on Rey’s wrist. “Come _on,_ girl!”

The last door of the hallway slides open as they approach it, as if it sensed their presence. Inside is nothing but old tapestries and an ancient wooden box.

The crying is almost deafening at this point. Rey covers her ears, and Maz throws her a curious look.

“You can hear it, can’t you?” she says.

“Hear _it?”_

Maz throws open the wood box, and inside, nestled in more fabric, is a thick, silver tube.

It does not look like it warrants special attention, much less the loss of the precious minutes they’ve taken to find it. Maz grabs it and shoves it into Rey’s hands.

The moment it touches her, the screaming stops and the entire world changes. Suddenly, she’s not on Takodana anymore – she’s on a First Order ship. It’s darker than the ship would ever be, the hallway stretching out like an infinite void before her.

Somewhere in that void she can hear heavy breathing, the sound filtered and amplified through a mask.

Instantly her stomach drops.

One by one the lights shutter on until they land on Kylo Ren's dark figure, standing only meters away from her.

“Rey,” he says, reaching out for her. “Don’t be afraid.”

He takes a step toward her.

She recoils from him, staggering back. She never told him her name.

“Get away from me!”

“Rey, _please_ –”

His steps quicken. Rey takes several steps back and turns around to run --

“Come back –” he shouts

 _Come back! s_ creams the little girl.

A bright light behind her flashes, and now she’s in the desert, on Jakku, watching her younger self scream and beg at the ship taking off in the sky.

“Quiet, girl!” Unkar Plutt snaps.

Rey reaches for herself, and the world shifts and turns again. Rain splatters and an ocean storms below them, just inches away from the cliff’s edge. An old, hooded man stands on the edge of the cliff, watching the torrent of waves below. Lightning cracks against the sky as he turns to look at her straight in the eye.

“These are your first steps,” he says, reaching out a mechanical hand to her.

Another bolt of lighting hits, just inches away from her, blowing the rock and tufts of grass and sending her falling backwards into the ocean’s abyss – Rey screams –

And wakes up on the stone floor of the storage room, breathing hard, her face wet.

“What – was – _that_?” she demands, her throat so tight with unshed tears it’s hard to force the words out.

Shock illuminates Maz’s eyes. “It calls to you,” she breathes.

“What _is_ it?!” She drops it like it burned her and scrambles back from it.

“It’s a lightsaber. The weapon of the Jedi. It was Luke’s and his father’s before him.” Maz bends down and scoops it up before handing it out to Rey. “And now it calls to _you_.”

“I don’t want it!” She shouts.

“I don’t care!” says Maz, anger flaring up. She grabs Rey’s hand and slaps the saber into it. “We do not have time for this! The First Order cannot have this. You must take it to the Resistance. Take it back to Luke.”

“Why me?” she demands. “Why not Poe?”

Maz closes Rey’s fingers around the hilt. “Because you were meant to have it. I just feel it. _Listen_.”

Rey strains to hear something, like more of her own screaming or Kylo Ren’s begging, but it’s not a sound that she hears. It’s a feeling. A knowing. A sense of rightness. The kind of feeling she gets when she lands a magnascrew by instinct alone.

“Alright,” she say shakily. “I’ll take the kriffing thing. How do I get out of here?”

Maz looks relieved. “Oh, the stubbornness of youth,” she mutters. “Come, I have an underground exit. It leads out into the woods. Find Han or Poe and get out of here.”

At the end of the hallway is a secret panel that reveals the dark void of a tunnel.

“The path is shallow and easy. Just keep your hand on the wall.”

Rey looks down at Maz. “What about you? You could come with us.”

She realizes, suddenly, that none of Maz’s escape plans are for herself. And if the First Order knew she was harboring fugitives, it’s not going to end well for her.

Maz snorts. “Sith. Empire. First Order. I have been untouchable for the last thousand years. Don’t worry about me, child. Worry about yourself. Now _go_.”

“Thank you,” Rey manages before she dives into the darkness of the tunnel.

True to Maz’s word, the tunnel spits her out into the forests on the outskirts of her castle. The low hum of First Order ships that had started minutes ago is now a deafening roar. She watches, horror-struck, as the first ships appear over the lake and land in front of the castle.

Between them, they have enough fire power to destroy an entire city in minutes – they would take out Maz’s bar in seconds. It’s wildly over-kill, and it crystallizes the realization of how badly they want to get rid of Luke Skywalker.

She catches a glimpse of the fiery red hair of General Hux descending down the ramp. Flashes of memory hit her – Hux clawing at his throat, thrown onto the floor with invisible hands, while Kylo Ren looks on with murder in his eyes.

It’s enough to jump start her into motion. She sticks out here, her First Order jumpsuit immediately obvious to any stormtrooper who would see her, its dark color standing out among the lush greens and browns of the landscape.

Hopefully, when she finds Han, he won’t shoot first and ask questions later at the sight of her uniform.

From the looks of her whereabouts, Han’s ship is clear on the other side of the castle. Rey takes off.

They are all out of time.


	5. Part 2 Chapter 2

Rey can skim across the tops of the dunes, faster than a sandstorm, and she can glide silently across the catwalks of the  _ Finalizer _ , but the rocks and branches and kriffing  _ roots _ of the forest stall her at every turn, like the forest itself is trying to betray her to the Order.

So it shouldn’t surprise her when a blaster bolt misses her by a hair, hitting the trunk of the tree next to her. She whirls around to see a stormtrooper off to her left, and she immediately ducks behind a huge rock.

Another blaster bolt hits the top of the rock, spraying her hair with rubble. She pulls the blaster Han gave her earlier from her pocket with shaking hands, thumb slipping on the safety twice before she gets it to click.

Before she can second-guess herself, Rey pops her head up and fires off a shot directly at the stormtrooper. With no time to think or aim, she relies on instinct, and instinct guides her blaster bolt straight to the stormtrooper’s head.

He falls over instantly and doesn’t get up.

She stares down at the body, gripped by the horrifying knowledge that she just killed someone.

A stormtrooper.

A stormtrooper like Finn.

What if they –

Another blaster bolt hits the rock, inches from her arm, sending up another spray of debris. Two more stormtroopers appear, their guns raised.

“Surrender to the First Order,” says one. “Or we’ll shoot.”

Rey almost wants to mouth off – the first stormtrooper didn’t give her such a kind offer. Instead she aims her blaster at one of the thick branches above them and fires off a shot. The crack of the resulting damage echoes in the forest, and Rey uses the distraction of the falling limb to run, diving into the winding paths of the forest without any forethought of how to find her way back out.

Seconds later, blaster fire erupts around her. She runs in a zig-zag pattern – this isn’t the first time she’s been shot at, though the Teedo have much better aim than these guys. The trees and rocks explode around her, but Rey doesn’t even blink. She heads to a deep rock ravine with single-minded determination.

She would have made it if her foot hadn’t caught on a root and sent her sprawling face-first into the ground. Just as she throws herself back onto her feet, they have gained on her enough to send more blaster fire her way.

One bolt grazes her side in a streak of bright pain. She fumbles with her blaster, refusing to die in these woods like some kind of animal, when a streak of black hurdles itself from the trees.

It happens faster than her brain can process: the stormtroopers are lifted up in the air and gutted on a crimson blade before an invisible force tosses her aside. In seconds, they are dead, and the dark figure turns to her.

It’s  _ him. _

Kylo Ren towers over her, looking exactly the way he did when he used to visit her, dressed in simple black clothes, without his mask. His face is streaked with dirt and sweat.

It’s enough to make her heart stop and then stutter again.

He looks at her with equal shock. “ _ You _ .”

She shoots a blaster bolt near his foot, but his blade catches it an sends it ricocheting off into the trees.

The fear that had bubbled under her self-control now bursts free. Rey fires off another shot and then scrambles to her feet before taking off into the ravine.

It makes no sense to run. Kylo Ren can choke her from across distances. He can certainly move faster than her – he killed those stormtroopers in seconds.

(Why did he do that? She doesn’t have time to wonder–)

But fear overtakes sense. Right now, instinct is telling her to run, even if the sound of his steps are gaining on her, even if he outmatches her in every way possible, even if she has no idea where the hell she’s going and her ankle screams with every step.

Every so often, she turns and shoots another blaster bolt his way, not that it does anything. Eventually, the ravine narrows too much, and she tries to scrabble up the hillside, but her ankle finally gives out, sending her sliding back down to the ground.

In seconds, his dark form appears around the rock. Rey points the blaster at him and shoots bolt after bolt until the casing warms dangerously under her fingers. The bolts ricochet around them, sending sparks and bits of rock flying as he deflects them with his  _ hand _ .

“Stop shooting at me!” he shouts at her.

“Stop chasing me!” she yells.

“Fine!”

And suddenly Rey freezes. It happens instantly. Her legs are splayed akimbo from her fall, her arm is stuck straight out, blaster pointed right at his chest, but she can’t even so much as twitch her trigger finger. It’s as if a force field has wrapped itself around her.

She  can do nothing but wait for the moment when he kills her.

_ I’m sorry, Maz _ , she thinks wildly.  _ I tried _ .

Kylo Ren comes around to face her, his chest heaving with labored breathing. Rey stands helplessly before him – she can’t speak or even look away.

God, it hurts to look at him. She had dealt with the truth about him by not dealing with it. By running. And truly, the last two days have given her little opportunity to think about anything except getting out of their current scrape, the next one looming around the corner.

But even if she did, what good would it have done her? How could she possibly explain what happened? Kylo Ren didn’t make friends, and he certainly didn’t care for maintenance grunts like her. So why did he visit her? Why did he talk to her? Why did he give her his time, his attention (his caf).

What was the point of it all?

_ Being with you is the only time I feel any peace _ .

Kylo Ren shuts off his lightsaber and crouches in front of her, one knee resting on the ground. Frozen like this, she can’t escape the scrutiny of his gaze. His eyes rove over her form like he wants to memorize it, lingering on the place where the blaster bolt had grazed her.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says slowly, his voice low, the way you would talk to a wild animal. “I know you’re afraid of me. But if you keep running and shooting at me, you’re going to get us both killed. So I’m going to release you and you are going to lower that blaster and not shoot me in the face. Okay?”

The feeling in her limbs returns, but Rey remains frozen by her own uncertainty. She searches his face for any sign of threat or duplicity and sees nothing but the same calm, inscrutable expression he had had in all of their visits.

Slowly, she lowers the blaster until it rests at her side. It’s useless against him anyway. His eyes do nothing to hide his relief at the action.

Then his words catch up to her.

“What do you mean get  _ both _ of us killed?” she asks.

“The First Order is here for me. You just got caught in the crossfire.”

“They’re not here for you. They’re here for me and Finn,” she retorts before she can stop herself. “Wait, why would they be here for you?”

“Because I –”

He stops and tilts his head, listening. Rey strains over the sound of her own ragged breathing and hears the unmistakable noise of footsteps above them.

“I heard something,” says a voice filtered through a helmet. “Blaster shots came from around here.”

“Look, the rock is scored. She must be in the ravine.”

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Kylo mouths with great feeling.

He grabs her blaster –

“Hey!” she shouts without thinking.

“Down there!” cries one of the stormtroopers.

Kylo gives her a potently murderous look before heading down the ravine. She hears yelling and the sound of blaster shots. Footsteps crunch nearby and they sound armored.

Rey struggles to her feet, her ankle nearly giving out underneath her again. Pain lances up her leg, and she knows she won’t have enough time or strength to get herself out of the ravine before the stormtrooper sees her.

Kriffing hell, why did she leave her staff on the  _ Falcon _ , she has no defense left!

Wait.

That’s not true.

Rey shoves her hand into her pocket and pulls out the silver tube. She’s almost afraid to hold it, worried she might get barreled over with another hallucination, but her mind stays clear. No screaming, no visions.

Just a simple metal tube.

She presses the button on the side, and a bright blue blade of light shoots out just as the stormtrooper rounds the corner into her field of vision. Blaster fire erupts from his pistol immediately after he catches sight of her.

It ricochets off the lightsaber and back into his chest, sending him crumpling to the ground. Rey can’t explain how – the blaster fired and her arm moved to block it as if it had a mind of its own. Like some kind of latent instinct inside her suddenly roared to life.

She’s still staring at it and the dead trooper on the ground when Kylo Ren jumps back down.

He looks at her, speechless, like his brain can’t comprehend what his eyes tell him.

“Where the  _ fuck _ did you get that?” he demands, and he sounds angry.

Rey turns it off and shoves it back down into her pocket in a flare of fierce protectiveness. “It’s mine!”

“That’s debatable,” he snaps. “But we don’t have the time. More are coming. We gotta get out of here. Now.”

He stalks past her and scales the slope behind her, then reaches out his hand. Rey glares at it mulishly before taking it, allowing him to pull her up as if she weighed as much as a plush doll.

“Can you run?” he asks.

“I can – I can try,” she says.

Faint yelling echoes in the trees nearby.

“No time,” he says, and he swings her up and over his shoulder like a sack of spare parts and starts running.

The collision of her side injury against his shoulder with every step is excruciating.

“Hey!” she shouts, indignant. “Put me down!  _ Put me down _ !”

“Shut  _ up _ ,” he snarls.

“If you don’t want to get shot, then put me the hell do–”

His hand rests suddenly on top of her head, large enough to cover it almost entirely.

“You can yell at me for this later,” he mutters.

And then the world goes black.

Rey stirs awake somewhere dark. Panic rises up in her, and she swallows it back down, focusing on her surroundings. She hears the unmistakable sounds of a ship – low beeps of computers, the deep hum of hyperspace engines, cold air filtering through the vents.

She sits up and bangs her head on the ceiling of what must be a bunk bed, and hisses sharply.

The last thing she remembers is running through the forest – no, getting carried like a sack of junk through the forest. Now she’s on a dark ship in the middle of hyperspace.

A million questions race through her mind.

Did Kylo Ren kidnap her? Is she to be some kind of hostage? Why was the First Order shooting at him? Why was he killing stormtroopers, and where is his armor? What ship is she on, and where are they headed? What happened to her friends? Did they escape? Did they try to wait for her?

Once the initial panic dims, the pain of her injuries come roaring back. Her ankle throbs. Her side is  _ killing _ her. Her forearms burn with what feels like lots of small cuts. She runs a hand gingerly down her body, trying to take stock –

The lightsaber.

Her stomach clenches.

The lightsaber is gone.

He  _ took _ it while she was unconscious! That utter  _ bastard _ . Like one lightsaber isn’t enough for him! And her blaster on top of  _ that _ . Is she to have nothing to defend herself with?

Rage ignites in her, dampening her pain. She crawls out of the bed, careful of her ankle, and limps down the small hallway towards what looks like the cockpit.

Sitting in the pilot’s chair, Kylo Ren turns over her lightsaber in his hands, studying it.

“Give. It.  _ Back _ .” She snarls.

She braces one hand against the wall next to her, trying to look intimidating and not like her leg might give out underneath her at any moment.

Kylo spins the chair to the side, his eyes sliding down her body. Assessing her weaknesses, of which there are many right now.

“You don’t even know how to use this,” he says dismissively. “You’re lucky you didn’t cut your own arm off.”

“It’s basically a sword, it’s not that difficult,” she snaps. “And you  _ stole it _ from me after you  _ knocked me out, _ you motherkriffing bastard!”

“I saved your life!” he says, an edge in his tone. “You were screaming like an animal, attracting everybody’s attention in a mile radius. It’s like you wanted us to get shot.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to be running with the person they were  _ shooting _ at!”

“You can’t run at all! You’re barely standing as it is. Did you really expect me to dump you on the ground and then leave you to die? Because that was the only other option.”

“I could have handled myself!”

Which is a bald-faced lie, but she can’t stomach the thought of admitting that he did her a favor by basically kidnapping her.

And judging by his snort, he knows she’s lying.

“With what, a lightsaber you know nothing about?”

“Well, I also had a blaster, but  _ someone _ stole that, too!”

“I borrowed it! I needed something long range. I was going to give it back.”

She spreads her hands. “When? I don’t see it.”

He rises to his feet suddenly, towering over her. She can barely make out his features by the light of the console. Maker, she forgot how tall he was. Memories flash in her mind of him helping her in the ship –  _ his ship _ – holding a radiviewer, a wall of heat behind her. Now he’s a wall of heat in front of her.

Rey refuses to step back, not just due to pride but also the fact that her leg might very well give out if she does.

“Where did you get it?” he asks her slowly.

“It’s none of your business,” she says, making sure to enunciate each word.

He leans in even closer, and Rey presses her side into the cold metal wall out of instinct. “It’s  _ every _ bit my business. Tell me. Now.”

His eyes, dark and furious like a sandstorm, bear down on her. Rey locks her gaze with his.

“I found it,” she says, licking her lips.

It doesn’t escape her notice that his gaze darts down to it for half a second.

“ _ Where _ ?”

He’s losing patience, the anticipation getting to him. Rey uses this distraction and lunges forward, her hand reaching for the lightsaber held loosely in his hand.

Faster than what should be humanly possible, Kylo wrenches his arm back and over his head, pushing her against the wall with his other hand. His fingers span almost the entire length of her collar bone, which feels fragile under his touch.

“It was entrusted to me,” she yells. She tries to push back against his hand, but his strength overpower hers. “I won’t let you take it!”

She reaches her hand out and something in her breaks open, like a power surge in a circuit. Like the  _ Breath of R’iia _ roaring to life.

The lightsaber shakes in his grip, and then it shoots out into her hand with enough force to sting. Rey stares at it, uncomprehending. Kylo stares down, comprehending and looking like he doesn’t want to.

“I –  _ what _ –” Rey’s voice squeaks.

Why does weird shit always happen around this thing?

Before they can react, her ankle gives out, sending her crumpling to the floor. Kylo Ren catches her, his arms pulling her back up around her middle.

“Come on,” he says. “There’s a medkit in the back.”

Rey tightens her grip on the lightsaber and holds it close to her chest. Kylo sighs.

“I’m not going to take it,” he tells her, somewhat exasperated. “We have bigger things to worry about. Let’s get you patched up.”

The ship is tiny. Down the hall from the cockpit is space for a pair of bunk beds set into the wall, a miniscule refresher, and a storage closet.

And that’s it.

Rey sits on the edge of the toilet in the ‘fresher, holding her tunic up to her breast-band while Kylo kneels down in front of her, inspecting her exposed torso. She’s already cleaned the cuts on her arm with a disinfectant pad and spray-bandages and slapped a bacta patch on her ankle, but the burn from the blaster bolt stretches into her blind spot.

Kylo had insisted on helping her, though his close proximity is bringing back memories of when she almost kissed him on that ship –  _ his _ ship. That’s the one memory she’s fought the hardest not to think about, but seeing him knelt before her, those haunting eyes scant inches away from hers, makes it impossible to ignore it.

Looking back, it’s hard not to feel stupid. It all adds up, and yet the thought didn’t even occur to her. How he always knew where to find her whenever Kylo Ren had another outburst. How she never saw him when Kylo Ren left on missions for the Supreme Leader. How he never wore a uniform or had any identifiable rank.

How terrible he had looked, like he never slept, like he was always fighting something. She remembers how he jerked back when she tried to wipe blood from his nose, like he was shifting into a defensive stance before remembering his situation.

And that’s not even touching the weird coincidences – like how she would get the shift off after complaining to him about working without sleep or working on Kylo Ren’s ship after admitting to him that regular maintenance bored her.

The only reason why she didn’t figure out the truth was because she didn’t want to know. Their friendship had existed in a precarious bubble, away from any influence or expectation, and the loss of it hurt so much worse than she expected.

Now, in the unspoken truce between them, it feels like she’s caught in an echo of those stolen moments. It hurts to see him so quiet and inscrutable, like he always had been with her, like the past three days never happened. She almost wishes he would argue with her more, to reinforce the reality of who he is.

Maker, had it really only been three days ago that she replaced light fixtures and answered questions about Jakku, trying to coax that hint of a smile out of him?

Rey has lived almost her entire life in the safety of monotony. Even with moving to the  _ Finalizer _ , she had just exchanged one routine for another. She used to think she hated it, but now, in three short days, she’s gone from a stable, if soul-sucking, job with the First Order to here, in hyperspace, heading to an unknown location.

And, she realizes with despair, she never got the coordinates to the Resistance base. Now she’s stuck on an unknown ship in an unknown corner in space with the most dangerous man in the galaxy, and she has no way of finding Finn or Han again.

A sharp sting interrupts her train of thought, and Rey flinches.

“Sorry,” the most dangerous man in the galaxy murmurs as he sets the disinfectant pad on the edge of the sink. “I’m going to put a bacta patch on. That should take care of the worst of it – prevent infection. We’ll see how it looks in a day cycle or so.”

He reaches into the medpac and pulls out one of the patches. Rey marvels at the casual way he peels off the backing and tosses it in the trash. Back on Jakku, Bacta was more precious than money or shelter or even water.

“Hold still,” he says. “This is probably going to sting.”

Rey sucks in a breath and tries to keep herself from flinching as he carefully applies the batca patch. It does sting, so she focuses on the feel of his other hand on her abdomen to ground her. It spans almost the entire width of her stomach, thick and callused, his warmth a sharp contrast to the cool touch of the bacta.

“Done.”

His fingers skim up her torso and carefully pull the hem of her shirt down over her wound, and the action is so unbearably gentle that it breaks her.

How can this quietly tender man be the same person who causes so much destruction? How do they exist in the same body, in the same mind?

“Thank you,” she says, swallowing thickly against her tight throat.

He keeps his gaze fixed on the hem of her shirt where his fingers still linger for a long moment. Then his eyes flicker back up to hers.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his words like a soft roll of thunder. “About everything. It’s all I could think about when you left. Stars, you must be so confused.”

“I haven’t understood anything that’s happened in the last three days,” she says, rather helplessly. “And I especially don’t understand  _ you _ .”

He swallows thickly, his eyes too soft to live in a murderer’s face.

“That makes two of us.”

He rises to his feet and holds out his hand.

“Let’s head back to the cockpit,” he says. “I’ll answer any question you ask.”

His grip is strong and sure, and his hand dwarfs hers completely.

The bacta works fast. She barely limps to the pilot chair before settling carefully into it, to avoid jarring her side.

Kylo Ren plops into the co-pilot chair and kicks his feet up on the dash, careful not to press any levers or buttons with his heels. He reminds her so powerfully of Han Solo that she almost does a double take. Han had sat in that exact position on their way to Takodana while Chewie muttered about it under his breath.

How strange that Kylo Ren would make her think of Han. Her eyes track him carefully as he leans his head back and looks over at her.

“Well?” he prompts.

“I don’t even know where to  _ start _ . I –” she looks at the console rather helplessly. “Where are you taking me?”

“An asteroid field on the outskirts of Bespin.”

“An  _ asteroid field _ ? Why the hell would we go there?”

“Because the First Order can track people through lightspeed, and if they follow us there, I can lose them in the asteroid field.”

The bottom of her stomach drops out. “ _ They can what?! _ That’s not – that’s not possible! I think I would have heard something about it!”

“It’s new and under the highest security clearance. It’s never been tested. But the potential is there.”

“ _ Shit _ ,” says Rey.

“I know,” he says grimly.

Her mind whirls, trying to incorporate this information with what she already knows – which is almost nothing.

“Okay. Alright. Okay.” She sits up straighter and shakes her head as if that could shuffle her thoughts in order, like smacking a computer that’s fritzing out. “Why are you running from the First Order? Why are they shooting at you? Let’s start with that one.”

“I’m running from the First Order because I killed Snoke, and they’re going to execute me for it. Well,” he adds with a twitch of a smirk, “they’re going to  _ try _ .”

This is stated so matter-of-factly that, at first, it doesn’t sink in. Rey looks at his serious face and cracks up in hysterical giggles.

“I’m sorry. I just – it sounded like you said you  _ killed the Supreme Leader _ . But that’s not true because that would be  _ insane _ .”

“I did,” he says, and he is dead serious.

“ _ Why _ ? If you wanted to take his place, you wouldn’t be on the run right now like a fugitive.”

A long moment of silence stretches between them. Rey swallows, uncomfortable with the sudden thought that maybe her logic is wrong, that he’s totally jockeying for Supreme Leader and she might get press-ganged into helping him.

And there’s not a lot she could do to stop him, stuck on this ship with him.

“Because he told me to kill General Leia Organa of the Resistance.”

Rey stares at him. Nothing about this man makes any sense. Nothing. Nothing he has done and said to her, compared to his identity and reputation, has added up, and this only makes it worse.

“You’re Kylo Ren! You  _ hate _ the Resistance!  _ That’s  _ what sent you over the edge – the opportunity to take out their leadership? How does that make any sense at all?”

Poe had told her so many things about Kylo Ren, the lengths he’d go to to take down the Resistance. He’s murdered countless members before – why would the General matter to him so much as to make him turn on his master?

“Because General Leia . . . is my mother.”

Rey collapses back in her seat. She’s done. She’s done trying to figure this tangled mess out.

“Of course,” she says, throwing her arm up in the air. “That makes perfect sense! Kylo Ren’s mother is the head of the Resistance. Why didn’t I see it before? And Poe Dameron is your long-lost brother, and Luke Skywalker must be your father, right?”

“Actually, Luke Skywalker is my uncle. He and my mother are twins.”

She looks, rather desperately, for any sign that he might be teasing with her, but his eyes reflect nothing but deep and utter solemnity.

“I think – I think I might need to lie down again,” she says faintly.

“I know it sounds outrageous and unbelievable. But it’s true. Trust me, it . . .” he looks away. “It was not easy to live with.”

Rey could ask a million questions about  _ that _ , but she doesn’t pry. She knows what it’s like to want to shove pieces of your past in a little box and pretend it didn’t happen.

Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker are the kind of famous that slide into legendary. Until she met Poe, she didn’t even think Luke Skywalker was a real person.

Stars, the weight of such expectation must have been unbearable. As a nobody, a worthless orphan, there was no one to bat an eyelash at her decision to work for the First Order, and no one would have cared if she had stayed. Though that knowledge brought her terrible loneliness, at least it meant she was free to make her own choices without the opinions of anyone else but herself. It gave her the freedom to craft her identity in whatever way she pleased.

She doesn’t know how she would react to the restrictions of his family legacy –

Her stomach drops. Merciful fucking stars, the lightsaber. The lightsaber that  _ belonged to Luke Skywalker. _ Luke Skywalker, who was  _ Kylo Ren’s uncle _ . No wonder he was so upset at the thought of her keeping it from him. It’s more than just a weapon – it’s a family heirloom.

It still sits, a heavy weight in her pocket. Rey slides her fingers over it and slowly pulls it out. The tussle they had over it burns bright in her mind – with one moment in particular burning the brightest.

Despite his promise not to take it, Kylo’s eyes slide and lock onto the lightsaber the moment she pulls it out. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. Rey fights off an instinctual urge to clutch the lightsaber to her chest.

“This really should be yours,” she says, offering it to him. “I didn’t know it belonged to your family. Maz insisted that I take it before the First Order arrived and to keep it safe until the Resistance could return it to Luke Skywalker.”

To her surprise, Kylo pushes it back towards her. She can tell the gesture cost him, by the look in his eyes. “You should keep it. Clearly, Maz thinks you’re more worthy of it than me. And I can’t say that I blame her.”

“To be honest, it kind of frightens me. The first time I touched it, I . . . hallucinated.”

His gaze sharpens. “Hallucinated? What did you see?”

Flashes of the vision flare up in her mind – she hears the faint screaming of her younger self and shakes her head to dislodge it.

“I saw my past, the day my parents left me. I saw –” she swallows. “I saw you. In a dark corridor on the  _ Finalizer.  _ You were calling out to me to – to listen. To stay.”

His expression has turned very still. Rey feels a flash of discomfort. It’s the closest she’s come to mentioning their past friendship.

“And then I saw an older man, hooded, on an island. There was lightning. He said these were my steps, and then everything disappeared. Maz said it  _ called _ to me, whatever that means.”

Thick silence descends upon them both. Kylo looks lost in thought, gaze cast through the viewport.

“Do you . . . know what it means?” she tries.

When he looks back at her, his eyes are dark and fathomless, a storm of emotions.

“Do you remember that moment we fought over it in the cockpit, when it flew into your hand?”

She nods.

“I think that you are Force-sensitive,” he says slowly.

“What’s Force-sensitive?”

There’s that fragment of a smile again, but this time, it’s tinged with sorrow. “It means that you’re like me.”

One again, her mind whirls. Like him. Like Kylo Ren. Capable of terrible destruction, of hurting someone without even touching them, of wielding a weapon of legend few could defend against.

“What – what do I do about that? Do I have to do something? Could I ignore it?”

“You could try. Just because you’re Force-sensitive does not mean you’re particularly powerful. Maz is Force-sensitive, and she was never a Jedi. But if you are powerful . . . you would need a teacher, if only to help you get it under control. Trust me, ignoring something like that causes all kinds of . . . accidents.”

His gaze darts away.

“Who is going to teach me?” she asks. “You?”

Her gut twists uncomfortably at the thought.

Kylo gives a bitter snort. “No. Not me. You need Luke. He didn’t do a great job with me, but . . . maybe you’ll be different.”

_ Didn’t do a great job.  _ Judging from how Kylo Ren turned out, that’s the understatement of the galaxy.

Something on the console starts beeping. They both glance down at the announcement that they will drop out of hyperspace in one minute.

Kylo turns in his seat and grips the controls. “Moment of truth,” he says grimly. “Do you know your way around a targeting system?”

Rey rolls her eyes. “How hard is it to shoot something when the ship is aiming for you?”

“You’d be surprised,” he mutters.

“Well, if you’re so worried, then switch me places, and I’ll pilot.”

Kylo snorts. “Not in a million years. Just because you fix ships doesn’t mean you know how to fly them.”

“Excuse you! Just because I know how to repair ships doesn’t mean I  _ don’t _ know how to fly them!”

Kylo spares her a baleful glare, and Rey has never felt more outraged in her  _ life _ .

“You grew up on Jakku in an AT-AT. What the hell would you even be flying?”

“I grew up with all kinds of abandoned flight simulators! I’ve logged in  _ thousands _ of hours in a hundred different kinds of ships –”

“Oh, a  _ flight simulator _ ,” he says with deep sarcasm. “Forgive me, that’s totally legitimate. I feel so much better now.”

“I’m not a complete moron, you know--”

They drop out of hyperspace, their argument cut short as both of them wait, hardly breathing, for First Order ships. Rey’s heart thuds so loudly in her ears, she can barely hear the ambience of the ship. Her eyes flicker back and forth between the targeting system and the viewport.

After a couple of tense, silent minutes, Kylo sighs deeply, relaxes the death grip on the controls, and leans back in his seat.

“I think we left too quickly for them to catch us,” she suggests tentatively.

“Yeah. And this ship is supposed to be completely untraceable.” He runs his hand through his hair, and she notices that his fingers shake ever so slightly. “Thank the kriffing stars for Maz. I could kiss her right now.”

“Of course you know Maz,” says Rey. “What is she – your godmother? Secret wife, perhaps? Long-lost aunt or something?”

That dangerous hint of a smile tugs at his mouth, and something in Rey’s stomach flutters at the sight of it. She missed it – not just the smile, but the opportunity to bring it out in him.

“She’s known my family for years, and me since I was a baby,” he explains. “And thank the Maker, because if not, she probably would have shot me when I showed up before I could open my mouth and explain. Even so, she wasn’t very happy to see me.”

Rey thinks of him in the forest, not having made it to his ship before the First Order descended. “You can’t have arrived that much earlier than me,” she says. “That would explain why she seemed so on edge.”

“Yeah, I think I stressed her out.” Kylo scrubs a hand over his face. “That cantina had stood for a thousand years, and now it’s rubble. Fucking stars, Maz is going to be so pissed.”

“She’ll probably shoot you next time,” Rey agrees.

“I think I would let her.”

Outside the viewport, Rey can see the looming shadows of the asteroid field.

“So what’s the plan? What are we going to do now?”

“ _ We _ are not going to do anything _. _ ” Kylo sits up and pulls up the navigation system. “I’m flying us to Bespin, calling in another favor, and getting _ you  _ on a ship to the Resistance base.”

“You know where the Resistance base is?” Dread cuts through her excitement like a blaster bolt through the gut. “If  _ you _ know where the base is, then so does the First Order.”

“Yes, they do,” says Kylo. “But right now, Hux is throwing everything he’s got into hunting me down. As far as he’s concerned, since the Resistance thinks they’re safe, they won’t move, and he can deal with them once he’s officially Supreme Leader.”

Oh, sweet Maker –  _ Finn! _ “We have to warn them!” she cries.

“ _ You  _ have to warn them. I’m not getting anywhere near that place.”

Rey glares at him. “Why? Because you don’t have the guts to face your mother?”

Kylo shoots her an equally potent glare. “Because I’m the most wanted man in the galaxy, and if I go with you I could bring the entire might of the First Order straight to her!”

“Oh. Right.”

Despite all the unresolved history between them – the one question she’s afraid to ask – despite the instincts she honed on Jakku that scream not to trust him, Rey does not want to split up. She does not want to be alone. She’s had a taste of what it’s like to be part of a team, a partnership, and she craves more of it.

Kylo starts typing in coordinates, and a sudden thought hits her.

“Wait!” she says, grabbing his hand before he can input the coordinates and start the hyperdrive.

He stares down at their joined hands, frozen, and Rey swallows, pulling her hand back with great reluctance.

_ Focus! _

“If Hux can’t find you, he’ll try to draw you out,” she says. “And the best way to do that would be –”

“To target the Resistance base,” he finishes for her grimly and slams his fist onto the console. “ _ Fuck _ !”

“We have to get there before he does.”

“No. We have to get there before he gets to Starkiller Base.”

Kylo covers his face with his hands and takes several long, deep breaths. She can sense his anger gathering in the space of their tiny cockpit, like clouds before a sandstorm.

He wouldn’t be stupid enough to throw a tantrum  _ here _ , would he? But after a minute or so, he brings his shaking hands down to his lap, looking dearly like he wants to hit something. Rey watches him carefully. She keeps her questions about Starkiller Base to herself.

“I’m fine,” he says, sending her a side-eyed glance.

He punches in the coordinates. To her surprise, the Resistance base is located on a planet only three hours away. The hyperdrive hums to life before the stars stretch out, sending then hurtling through space.

They both watch the swirling light of the hyperspace lane through the viewport.

It’s rather hypnotic, she discovers. In all her time on the  _ Finalizer _ , Rey had never really seen a hyperspace lane. Sure, the  _ Finalizer _ entered hyperspace all the time, but the ship was so big and she was rarely near any viewports, so the only way one could tell hyperspace from real space was the distinct hum of the engines and that was it.

“I’m surprised,” says Kylo slowly, looking over at her. The stormy flashes of his temper have disappeared. “I said I would answer anything. But you haven’t asked me the one question I thought you would.”

That’s because it’s the one question she’s afraid to ask.

“What? Why someone like you – the Great Kylo Ren, son of General Leia Organa and the nephew of Luke Kriffing Skywalker – would waste their time with a pointless nobody like me?”

Rey looks down at her hands, picking at the skin around her fingernails. “Maybe I don’t want the answer. Maybe I don’t want to hear that you were just fucking with me because you were bored, or it was some sick game you were playing, knowing I couldn’t retaliate. Maybe it’s better if we just . . . don’t talk about it.”

Thick silence wraps around them, suffocating her. After a long moment, she dares to glance in his direction only to see him staring at her, completely outraged.

“Is  _ that _ what you think happened?” he demands. “What the  _ fuck _ .”

“Well, how else do you explain it?” she snaps. “You’re second to the Supreme Leader, and I’m  _ nothing _ . There’s no reason for you to b–”

“ _ Stop _ .”

The word echoes like a crack of thunder. Kylo swivels his seat so he faces her, his hands gripping the armrest of her seat, just the barest inch away from touching her. There is no escape from him.

“You’re not a nobody,” he says fervently. “You’re not a game. You’re not  _ nothing _ . Not to me.”

His eyes are like black holes, pulling her gaze to him. She couldn’t look away even if she wanted to.

“Then what am I?”

“The person who changed  _ everything _ .”

It doesn’t compute. The way he’s looking at her, the intense sincerity in his voice, like she’s a canteen of water in the desert, a guiding star when you’re lost. Precious beyond description.

“How?” she demands. “I didn’t _ do _ anything. I never helped you! I just talked to you while I cleaned up – _ your _ kriffing mess.”

“Exactly. You talked to me. And I couldn’t get your words out of my head. When Snoke told me to kill Leia, I – I could have done it.”

He swallows thickly, the self-loathing shining so clearly in his eyes.

“I could have done it, but it would have destroyed me. And Snoke knew it. It was a test – the ultimate test of my faith in him. To show him how far I was willing to go in service to the dark side of the Force. If I passed, I would have been granted power beyond what I could imagine. And then I remembered what you asked me.”

Rey’s mind whirls, trying to remember herself what she might have said in their clandestine visits that would have changed his loyalty so drastically.

“You asked me once who was benefiting from my pain, if I was sure that it was me. At the time, I thought I was benefiting from it, that it made me more powerful. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The dark side of the Force, it  _ hurts _ – all the time. So did losing my family. So did becoming the kind of person they had warned me against my whole life.

“And you know what -- yes, using the dark side  _ has _ made me more powerful than I ever could have with Luke. But what did I get out of it? Any power I have gained has only been used in service of Snoke’s agenda. I wasn’t his apprentice – I was his tool. I had no control over my own life, no purpose of my own. What I gained did not replace what I lost. And I didn’t realize it until you asked me that question.”

He finally drags his gaze away, down at the lightsaber still clipped to his belt. “So when he asked me to kill my mother, knowing how much I loved her, how much it would destroy me – I snapped. I wasn’t going to take it anymore.”

He snapped. He snapped and murdered someone Rey had believed to be the most powerful person in the galaxy, a figure so untouchable people thought him immortal.

All because of an innocuous argument they had, a thought exercise more than anything, over a cup of caf, for fuck’s sake. Words that Rey had spouted in total ignorance of who he was and the situation he was in.

Words that started mass chaos in the galaxy.

It’s overwhelming to think about how much power she wielded without even knowing it.

“I don’t understand how it even started,” she says faintly. “Why would you even talk to me in the first place? The first time we met – fucking stars, the first time we met, I called you  _ bullshit _ . Why didn’t you just murder me on the spot?”

“The irony was too great to pass up,” he says, the corner of his lips quirking. “And honestly, it took me by surprise. I had left my datapad behind – it was a message from Hux that made me lose it – and I didn’t expect to find anyone in there when I went back to get it halfway through the night cycle. It sounds awful, but it never occurred to me that someone would have to fix all the stuff I broke.”

Rey snorts, and he sends her a rueful look.

“Very few people have seen me without the mask, and I keep it that way on purpose. I’ve gotten so used to wearing it all the time that I forgot that I was bare-faced when I ran into you. And having you complain to me like I was just another person, a potential friend, someone to commiserate with – I realized that I hadn’t had a conversation with someone who didn’t fear me or hate me in a long, long time.”

Basic interaction. The barest amount of common decency. A hint of friendly interest. What would pass for the most casual of acquaintances had turned into a compulsive need for him.

“So, you were lonely?” Rey says.

He stiffens, defensive. “It wasn’t –”

“It’s alright,” she says. “I don’t mean it in a bad way. I grew up alone. I know what it feels like. You think you like being by yourself, but really you’ve just gotten used to it. The moment you find a friendly face, the possibility of someone who cares, all that need for just yourself crumbles in an instant.”

He nods.

“Of course, that doesn’t explain the caf,” she adds.

“The caf was an apology,” he admits. “The next time I saw you, I was in the mask and creating your next problem. I felt you watching me the whole time, and I knew it scared the shit out of you when I looked at you on my way out. I didn’t know they would keep dragging you from sleep or meals to fix it. I thought they would just assign it on your next shift. So caf was the least I could do for you.”

“You could have, you know, not created more work for me,” she points out.

The corners of his mouth twitch. “But then I wouldn’t have been able to talk to you later.”

“Don’t you  _ dare _ tell me you destroyed all those rooms just to see me!”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t have a lot of control over my temper. Snoke always encouraged me to lash out. So, no. But I can’t deny that knowing I would see you again afterwards might have . . . influenced me.”

Rey gives him a rueful smile in return.

“You know, I want to be mad about that, but . . . I had hoped every time they gave me a Code Ren that you would find me.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “Code Ren?”

“Yeah. That’s what they call it when you throw a temper tantrum like a little toddler.”

His eyes flash with amusement. “How does it feel to be the only person in the galaxy who could say that to my face?”

“Are you sure that’s true?” she retorts. “You haven’t seen your mother yet.”

At the mention of Leia, he flinches. Rey feels a thread of guilt. She rests her hand lightly on top of his forearm.

“Listen,” she says softly. “I was glad for each of those stupid tantrums. You weren’t the only one who was lonely.”

“You have that stormtrooper.”

Rey hides a smile at the bitterness in his tone.

“His name is Finn now, and I met him the same night I met you. And even though I care a lot about him, there’s something about you . . . It might sound crazy, but it feels like I already knew you. Like we met ages ago and somehow I had forgotten.”

“It’s not crazy,” he says quietly. “It’s the same for me. It might be the Force, trying to tell us something.”

The Force . . . Rey can still barely wrap her head around that. Before she met him, the Force was a fairytale. Now, not only does it exist, but it’s in  _ her _ .

Carefully, as if waiting for her to protest, Kylo takes her hand and threads their fingers together. Rey sucks in a sharp breath at the feel of his skin, his callouses sliding against hers, his warmth seeping through her.

“You know what is crazy?” he asks softly.

“What?” Her voice comes out hoarse.

The side of his mouth twitches upward. “I still don’t know your name.”

“You never tried to find out?” Her eyebrows raise. “It’s not like it was a secret. It’s in all the manifests, the schedules, the repair orders . . .”

“I wanted it to come from you.”

What a silly, sentimental thought. It spears her straight in the chest.

“That is crazy,” she agrees. “It’s Rey. Just . . . just Rey.”

Slowly, like the first hints of sun breaking through a sandstorm, a smile spreads across his face. After all the hints and twitches and almost-smiles, the real thing is breath-taking.

“Rey,” he says, like he’s savoring it. “Rey.”

  
  
  
  



	6. Part 2 Chapter 3

The cold metal of the floor bleeds through her clothes. Even after so many months in space, it still surprises Rey how cold metal can be. In the desert sun, metal burns.

Kylo sits across from her in the tiny hallway between the cockpit and the ‘fresher. Rey tries to copy his pose, sitting with her legs folded before her, her palms resting on her knees.

“Tell me what you know of the Force,” he says.

“It, um . . .” Rey’s brain stalls. She bites at her lip. “It exists? It – uh – it’s used by the Jedi, and it can make you throw people around like a rag doll?”

Kylo breathes in deep and lets out a long, slow breath. “Okay. So we’re starting from ground zero. I can work with that.”

Rey winces. “Sorry?”

“Don’t be. You grew up in a desert wasteland, and you never saw more than fifty people on any given day. It’s not fair to expect you to know anything. And the Empire did a lot to wipe out anyone who had knowledge of the Force, even if they weren’t Jedi.”

“I always thought the Jedi were a myth,” she admits.

“That was the goal,” says Kylo rather grimly. “Most people think the Force is power, but it’s not. It’s an energy that exists between all living things, and it balances the universe. People who are Force-sensitive can feel it around them, all the time.”

“I’ve never felt it,” says Rey.

“Really? You’ve never hit a target without aiming? Landed on your feet when you expected to fall? Felt something by instinct when you couldn’t see it?”

“I –”

Flashes of memories – finding those magnascrews without a radiviewer, suddenly regaining her balance when she nearly slipped from the ledges of those abandoned ships, always knowing Unkar’s ever shifting moods.

“That was the Force?” she asks, stunned.

The corner of his mouth quirks up. “It’s not just throwing people around like toys. It’s the voice in your head protecting you. All you need to do is seek its guidance on purpose.”

“How do you do that?”

“You reach out for it. But your mind has to be clear and quiet, which is why meditation is usually the first thing a student learns.”

“Right.” Rey straightens her posture, which is terrible after so many years hunched over, scrubbing parts clean and fixing up busted machinery.

Kylo stands tall, his back as straight as a sheet of transparisteel.

“Close your eyes,” he instructs softly.

Rey obeys, her ears straining to make up for it, picking up on the rustle of his clothing if he moves, the change in his breathing. It’s not that she doesn’t trust him, it’s just – it’s a hard habit to break.

“Reach out.”

She lifts her arm up, straightening it before her, the tips of her fingers brushing against his shirt.

“Rey . . . what are you doing?”

Her eyes crack open to see him staring flatly at her.

“I’m – I’m reaching out.”

His eyebrow raises. It takes a second for the realization to hit, and she feels incredibly stupid.

“Right. Like reach out with my –” she thumps her chest.

“Yeah, we’re definitely at ground zero,” he mutters. “Let’s try again. Imagine you’re in one of the sunken star destroyers on Jakku. There’s no light, and you can’t see anything. How would you navigate your way to safety? Reach out like you would there. It’s not instinct you were using.”

Rey takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She shoves her embarrassment to the back of her mind and focuses on imagining the scenario Kylo described. She’s been in that situation before, as a child. One of the Teedo had chased her off from his scrap, driving her deep into the star destroyer. He had closed some door she didn’t notice to lock her away, and Rey had to navigate by feel alone for another exit.

But it hadn’t been by feel alone, had it?

This time when she reaches out, hands resting in her lap, the Force is there to meet her. The feeling is hard to describe. It reminds her of electricity, a current that connects all living things together. Right now it hums and vibrates between her and Kylo like an arc of lightning, but she can also feel little sparks in the distance.

“What do you see?” he asks.

See? He told her to shut her eyes.

She hears a huff of soft laughter.

“What do you  _ feel _ is there?”

Ah.

“The ship,” she says softly. “I can feel the shape of it. The cold of space. The energy of hyperspace. But mostly . . . I feel you. You’re so warm and bright.”

She doesn’t know if it’s the Force or her own attraction or the deep well of her loneliness, but something inside her longs to reach for him, to curl around him and feel him near, as if he were an old friend she had been parted from for far too long.

The thought of it startles her out of her focus, her eyes snapping open. As if she would even know what that feels like, reunion. Why does it crop up with him?

“That’s probably because I’m the only other living thing in close proximity,” he explains.

Her brow furrows. “It’s more than that. You feel . . . familiar to me. It’s like I already know you, like the Force wants me to. And it felt that way back on the  _ Finalizer _ . Is it because you’re also a Force-user?”

“I don’t know.”

For a long moment he studies his feet, lost in thought. Then he looks back up at her, his gaze wary enough to get her hackles up.

“I think we should try something,” he says. “But I need you to trust me, or it won’t work.”

“What do you want to do?” she asks slowly.

“I think the Force has been trying to connect us. I think we should let it. But it would involve you being in my mind and me being in yours.”

That part inside of her practically lunges towards this idea with joyful eagerness. The rational part of Rey recoils. Kylo’s mind must be a dark, dark place, and she has never been so vulnerable with another person in her life. Not to mention all the things that could go wrong. What if he causes some kind of brain damage? What if  _ she _ causes some kind of brain damage? She doesn’t know anything about the Force!

“Is it going to hurt?” she asks.

“It would if I had to force my way through. But not if you let me in. That’s why you have to trust me.”

It’s a colossally stupid idea.

“How do I do it?”

“I’ll start,” he says. “It’ll be your instinct to shut me out – fight against it. I won’t force it, though. If you want me to pull away, just tell me to stop.”

His eyes flutter closed, leaving Rey sitting in anxious anticipation. The Force around her hums to life, like static on her skin, and then –

And then all sound disappears, as if sucked out into the vacuum of space. The buzz of the engines, the soft beeps of the pilot’s console, the hyperspace lane humming outside – all gone.

The only sound that remains is the steady breathing in her chest, amplified and in sync with Kylo’s.

For a moment they sit, suspended in each other’s energy. Then she feels something – a presence, a pressure – on the edge of her thoughts. Instantly her mind rebels at the thought of an intruder. Rey takes a deep, calming breath and forces herself to relax.

When their minds finally connect together, she lets out a gasp of shock.

She knows this presence, she  _ knows it.  _ It’s echoed in her for as long as she can remember, flashes of frustration and despair, loneliness and fear, with rare pockets of contentment. For years and years she thought it merely an echo of her own feelings as she scrabbled for survival.

It was  _ him _ this whole time?

The Force arcs between them, amplifying the echo of their connection until it roars inside of her, a broken circuit coming to life.

It’s too much. Her eyes snap open to see him staring at her with the same shock that pounds in her chest. He severs their connection so abruptly that it almost hurts. She could feel, before he pulled away, just how much this discovery rattled him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he says, swallowing hard. “I felt it too. I’ve felt you for a long, long time.”

“What the hell was  _ that _ ?” she demands, clenching her shaking hands. “I know you. I knew you before I met you. How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.” He stands up and paces the few feet of hallway the ship allows. It’s ridiculous how much she has to crane her neck to see him.

“It’s like a Force-bond,” he mutters, almost to himself. “But how could that have happened if we didn’t know each other, if no one initiated it?”

“What’s a Force-bond?”

He looks down at her. “It’s a bond between two people, amplified by the Force.”

She levels a flat stare at him. “No  _ shit _ . I could gather that much, thank you. What does it  _ do _ ?”

Kylo sighs. “It allows you to communicate with someone telepathically, across vast distances. You can hear each other,  _ see _ each other, even on opposite ends of the galaxy. It’s a link in the mind, so if you’re not guarded, you can feel what the other person is feeling or thinking.”

“I never saw you,” she says. “And we never spoke to each other.”

“No. And we could only sense each other erratically. For a long time I didn’t sense you at all.” He pauses. “How old are you?”

“I – I don’t know.”

“You don’t  _ know _ ?”

She glares at him. “The junker I scavenged for didn’t exactly throw me birthday parties.”

Kylo flushes in guilt. “Sorry. I’m twenty-nine, and I’m guessing you’re younger than that.”

“I’m definitely not that old,” she says. “My parents left me roughly . . . fifteen years ago? I was small, but old enough to remember it all. Maybe . . . four? Five?”

“So you’re roughly a decade younger than me.” He grimaces. “I’ve never felt old until this moment. But it makes sense. I was fifteen when I first felt you, and it was the most gut-wrenching anguish I had ever felt at that point. You would have been four or five. That’s usually the age when Force sensitivity starts.”

So he had felt it when her parents left? She remembers huddling in a dark corner of Unkar’s shop, long after he closed up, trying hard to cry in silence and feeling desperately alone. But she hadn’t been alone – someone else knew and felt her suffering in her darkest hour.

The thought of that triggers another memory –

“I felt something from you,” she says softly. “A chill, a bone-deep coldness, in the middle of the day. I was almost a teenager.”

Kylo swallows and looks away. “That was probably the day I . . . turned.”

So they both witnessed the worst moment of each other’s lives. In a way the thought comforts her, that neither of them had to suffer alone, even if they believed they were at the time.

Rey climbs to her feet. Kylo still won’t look at her, probably caught up in the memory of that day. Not allowing herself a moment’s hesitation, she walks up to him and wraps her arms around him. It’s the third hug she’s had since her parents left (Finn and Poe gave her the other two), but instead of feeling awkward or strange, Rey’s body melts and relaxes against his.

For a long moment his muscles seize and lock up underneath her. She can feel his back stiffen underneath her fingers. But then, slowly, he brings his arms around her. They rest across her shoulder blades, barely touching her, as if he’s afraid he might crush them.

She presses her forehead just below his collar bones, something inside her soothed and grounded by the weight of him. Kylo relaxes by degrees until eventually he holds her just as tightly.

After so many years of distant comfort, it feels like luxury.

They stand that way for a long time.

Kylo dwarfs her from behind in the ‘fresher mirror, his dark frame filling up the leftover space around her own reflection. Several small items rest around the edge of the sink – tubes of bacta and toothpaste, rolls of gauze, bricks of ration bars. She’s spent nearly the last hour lifting each one individually with varying degrees of success.

“Now try to lift them all at once,” he says, his breath stirring the hair on her crown. His hands rest on her shoulders.

Rey closes her eyes. The Force ebbs and flows within her. She recognizes it instantly now that she knows what to look for. Still, like a scarf caught in a breeze, it’s tricky to hold onto. Her senses trace over the outline of each object on the sink. She tries to keep hold of them all at once, juggling the different shapes in her mid, trying not to forget them.

“Focus,” Kylo murmurs.

She swallows and reaches her hand out. The items wiggle and shudder, but it’s hard to keep every shape in her mind so she can target them, and the Force keeps dancing away from her, slipping like sand through her fingers –

“Focus, Rey –”

He’s close enough that his voice vibrates through his chest against her back. She can think of nothing else but the heat of him behind her, his presence in the Force, a bright star that blots out everything else. Sense memories flash through her mind – the gentle press of his fingers as he applied bacta to her side, the sound of his breathing during meditation, the way he loomed over her as they fought over Luke’s lightsaber.

The shapes rattle and shake and a few spill onto the floor. Rey lets out a howl of frustration.

“You need to keep your mind on the here and now,” says Kylo, and she could throttle him.

Her eyes snap open, and she glares up at him through the mirror. “It would be a lot easier to focus if  _ you _ would shut up for two seconds! How is anybody supposed to concentrate with that?”

“Do you think you’ll be using the Force in perfect solitude?” he retorts. “You’ll have to concentrate in the middle of blaster fire and screaming and shit weather, all while people are trying to kill you. Me talking is the least of your worries. Now  _ focus _ .”

“I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like,” she yells. “I can’t get a handle on it. It’s like you’re asking me to rely on muscle memory when I didn’t make the memory to begin with! Why don’t you just toss me in a lake and say ‘Oh, just use the Force and  _ focus _ Rey – why are you drowning?’ It’s ridiculous!”

He waits out her little outburst with a flat stare through the mirror.

“Done?” he asks.

She opens her mouth to fire off some sarcastic retort, but then it strikes her, suddenly, how their roles have reversed. Now she’s the one throwing a tantrum, albeit on a much smaller scale.

“Perhaps,” she says instead, refusing to be lumped in with him.

“Would it help if we connected our minds and you could feel the way I use the Force?”

“I suppose . . . we could try it.”

It still frightens her a bit, having another person in her head while she immerses herself in his. Loneliness and solitude have intertwined so much within her that part of her still jealously guards her need for isolation even as she craves connection.

“Can I . . .” his hands hover over her shoulders and she nods.

His hands completely dwarf her shoulders, the tips of his fingers brushing her collarbones. The warm weight of them both grounds her and sends a dizzying curl of frisson down her spine. She tries desperately to get it under control as she feels their connection open up.

In Kylo’s mind, the Force is what she imagines the ocean to be like. Huge and unfathomable and always surrounding him, ready to answer his call with waves of power. He takes but a fraction of it and channels it to the sink. The Force flows over the items scattered on the floor and floats them gently back to the sink.

It’s amazing how easily he manipulates it. He feels powerful and in control and protected when using the Force, all the things Rey never felt but desperately wished for in her own life.

_ Now you try, _ his voice whispers in her mind.

He is so beautiful – how is she supposed to concentrate on the Force with him so close and so beautiful and  _ touching _ her and all she can think about is that moment in the cockpit of the  _ Silencer  _ and she could give anything know what would happen if those two fucking droids hadn’t shown up and –

Their connection breaks roughly, abruptly. Rey stares at him, wide eyed, through the mirror, cheeks red like sunburn at the realization that he could  _ hear _ all those thoughts in her head. Before she can stutter an apology, he clears the sink of all their clutter with one sweep of his hand. Then he turns her around to face him before hauling her up onto the edge of the sink. Her hands grab onto the front of his tunic to stabilize herself, mind stuttering in confusion.

“What – what are you doing?”

He looks at her with eyes as dark as the fathomless sea. “What I should have done in that cockpit.”

His hand slides across her cheek to cup the back of her head, and then he’s kissing her.

Obviously Rey has never kissed anyone in her life. Her whole body seizes up, and she sits, frozen and clinging to the front of his shirt. After a couple of seconds, Kylo pulls away, looking stricken.

“Sorry – was that –” he asks.

Rey cuts him off with a kiss of her own. It’s clumsy at first – their teeth clack – but eventually they sink into a rhythm, a slide of lips and tongue that grows more hungry and desperate with each passing moment. Rey’s hands slip up into the thick luxury of his hair, tugging and wrapping the locks around her fingers. Kylo groans against her mouth, clutching at her waist, tugging her flush against him. Every nerve lights up, her body straining towards his, shuddering at every brush of his thumb on her hipbone.

He tears himself away long enough to press burning kisses down the column of her throat. Her breath stutters and gasps.

“Rey,” he whispers hotly against her ear. “You have no  _ idea _ what you do to me–”

A loud beeping comes from the cockpit, the noise of it tearing his face away from hers.

They have reached their destination.

Kylo's gaze keeps darting between her and the doorway of the ‘fresher, clearly torn. His hands still rest on her hips, though his grip has slackened. Rey swallows, face flaming.

“We should get to the cockpit,” she says.

“Yes.”

He looks back down at her, as if trying to memorize her face. Then he presses his lips to her forehead in a lingering kiss before helping her off of the sink.

Stretched out before the cockpit viewport is the green jewel of D’Qar. Down there, nestled in the thick trees, is the Resistance and General Leia Organa herself. And, hopefully, Finn and Han and Poe.

She sneaks a glance over at Kylo. He stares out the viewport like a man looking at his own execution. She has no idea what General Organa is like, but Rey doubts she would kill her own son, especially after Kylo took out the Supreme Leader just for her.

But Rey also doesn't know the extent of what he has done under Snoke’s orders. Some things might not be forgivable.

She bites her lip and returns her gaze to the planet. Despite the danger, and the much-needed reunions, she almost doesn’t want to go.

Their relationship – whatever that is – has so far existed in a bubble of their own making, in stolen snatches, uninfluenced by the rest of the galaxy.

Will it survive under the scrutiny of people who probably won’t understand? Or will it fade, the way dreams do in the light of day?

“Are you ready?” she asks.

His hands grip the controls, white knuckled. “No,” he says tersely. “But it doesn’t matter.”

The ship starts its descent.  Despite her nerves, Rey can’t help but be mesmerized by so much green, a sight she didn’t get enough of on Takodana. D’Qar is a lush, decadent green, the sky covered in thick, white clouds. Maker, Rey has never seen clouds like that.

Before Takodana, she had never seen clouds.

A voice hails them on the comm.

“State your name and business,” a familiar voice crackles through the speaker. “You have thirty seconds before we blow you to hell and back.”

Off to the side of the viewport, she catches sight of an X-Wing and gasps.

“Poe!” she says, scrabbling for the comm. “Poe, it’s me!”

“ . . .  _ Rey? _ ”

“Yes!”

“Holy fucking shit! Everyone’s been worried sick about you! What happened?”

“It’s . . .” She looks over at Kylo. “It’s a long story.”

“Great, I love long stories! Follow me, I’ll take you to the base.”

Kylo grows more and more stone-faced as they follow Poe and descend over the trees to land in an outdoor hangar.

“How do you want to do this?” she asks, looking over at him as the ship powers down.

He takes in a shaky breath. “You go first.”

“So I can be a shield if they shoot on sight?”

That earns her a glare. “So they know you’re safe. Besides, the Gener – my mother – is the only person down there who knows what I look like. So I guess it’s up to her how they will react.”

Maker, that’s a terrifying thought.

“What are you going to do if they arrest you or – or try to hurt you?”

He shrugs. “Let them. I’ve done more than enough to deserve it.”

Rey stares at him. “Well, I won’t let it happen,” she says.

He snorts softly. “It’s the thought that counts.”

“Your faith in me is inspiring,” she says dryly. “Come on. It’s now or never.”

She unbuckles herself from the seat and gets up, driven by the need to see her other friends safe and sound. It’s a short dash out of the cockpit and down the ramp.

Finn is already waiting for her on the ground. She takes a running leap into his arms, savoring the way he holds her so fiercely.

“Oh my God, Rey,” he says. “Oh my God. I was so worried.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “A lot happened, and I didn’t know how to contact you.”

“It’s okay. We’re together now.”

“It’s okay, guys. I don’t need affection or acknowledgment or anything,” comes Poe’s sarcastic voice beside her.

Rey pulls him into the hug, ruffling his curly hair for good measure because she knows he hates it.

“So, you must be Rey,” says a woman’s voice.

Finn and Poe reluctantly pull away, allowing her to step out of their embrace. Finn keeps an arm around her shoulder, as if afraid she’ll disappear again. The woman stands before them, dressed in military fatigues, graying hair in an elegant braided arrangement.

“General Leia,” says the woman, offering her a hand.

Rey shakes it, stunned. This woman is the General? She’s so small! She barely clears Rey’s chin. And yet there’s a presence about her that makes her feel taller.

“It’s an honor,” she says.

“Likewise,” says Leia. “I’ve heard a lot about you already. My husband –”

“Rey,” says Finn sharply. His muscles go stiff beside her. “Who is  _ that _ ?”

Leia gasps sharply at the sight of Kylo descending down the ramp. He looks tall and imposing, his stride determined, but Rey knows his fists are clenched tightly to cover how much they shake.

“Ben,” she whispers.

Rey studies her for any sign of anger or fear, but the only emotion on Leia’s pale face is shock.

Finn’s hand grips tighter around her as Kylo – Ben? – walks towards them.

Kylo stops just short of his mother. Poe shifts his weight to the balls of his feet, his unease rippling the Force around him. She can’t blame him. Kylo towers over his mother, the height difference so stark it’s almost comical. With the top of her head falling just below his shoulders, Leia looks like the child, like someone he could break into pieces with just a couple of swings.

And Kylo has never looked more afraid in his life.

“Mom,” he says softly, swallowing.

He sinks to his knees, putting them at near eye level, and holds out his lightsaber to her.

“Did he  _ kill _ Kylo Ren?” Finn asks in disbelief.

Poe’s eyes look stormy, his mouth set in a grim line. “No. He  _ is _ Kylo Ren.”

“I surrender myself to the Resistance,” says Kylo.

He keeps his gaze cast firmly down at her feet. Leia takes the lightsaber, her face inscrutable. For a moment she just holds it, and Rey wonders in brief panic if she would strike her own son down with it.

But then she tosses it aside, like so much unusable scrap, and pulls him into her arms.

“Oh,  _ Ben.” _

Finn gasps next to her, and Poe’s eyes go wide. Kylo gazes over his mother’s shoulders, eyes searching for Rey like a man drowning. She can feel his distress, his confusion, the agony of his love for Leia, as if those feelings storm in her own heart.

She gives him a tiny nod of encouragement. Shakily, Kylo’s arms wrap around his mother, embracing her like he did with Rey in the cockpit, as if one wrong move would break her.

A hitched sob escapes him. He buries his face tightly in her shoulder. 

Poe turns his gaze towards Rey, eyes flashing.

“Hey, Rey? What the hell?”

“I said it was a long story,” she hisses.

“No  _ shit _ . And I’m going to hear every word of it.”


End file.
